[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-41]
TERRORISM AND THE NEW AGE OF IRREGULAR WARFARE: CHALLENGES AND
OPPORTUNITIES
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
APRIL 2, 2009
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TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
ADAM SMITH, Washington, Chairman
MIKE McINTYRE, North Carolina JEFF MILLER, Florida
ROBERT ANDREWS, New Jersey FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
JIM COOPER, Tennessee BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
JIM MARSHALL, Georgia K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas
BRAD ELLSWORTH, Indiana THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
BOBBY BRIGHT, Alabama
Bill Natter, Professional Staff Member
Alex Kugajevsky, Professional Staff Member
Andrew Tabler, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2009
Page
Hearing:
Thursday, April 2, 2009, Terrorism and the New Age of Irregular
Warfare: Challenges and Opportunities.......................... 1
Appendix:
Thursday, April 2, 2009.......................................... 27
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2009
TERRORISM AND THE NEW AGE OF IRREGULAR WARFARE: CHALLENGES AND
OPPORTUNITIES
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Miller, Hon. Jeff, a Representative from Florida, Ranking Member,
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee 1
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Chairman,
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee 5
WITNESSES
Alexander, Bevin, Adjunct Professor, Longwood University......... 2
Dreifus, Henry N., Founder and CEO, Dreifus Associates, Ltd.,
Inc............................................................ 3
Hartung, William D., Director, Arms and Security Initiative, New
America Foundation............................................. 7
Robb, John, Warfare Theorist, Author............................. 5
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Alexander, Bevin............................................. 34
Dreifus, Henry N............................................. 42
Hartung, William D........................................... 52
Miller, Hon. Jeff............................................ 32
Robb, John................................................... 48
Smith, Hon. Adam............................................. 31
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
TERRORISM AND THE NEW AGE OF IRREGULAR WARFARE: CHALLENGES AND
OPPORTUNITIES
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities
Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Thursday, April 2, 2009.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 3:35 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jeff Miller
(ranking member of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF MILLER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
FLORIDA, RANKING MEMBER, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND
CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Miller. The chairman is just a few minutes delayed. We
have a vote that is scheduled to come up very quickly.
I am a member of the minority party, and ordinarily we
would not begin a hearing or a brief with just a member of the
minority party. However, I have a microphone, and I am going to
ask for unanimous consent to allow me to begin the hearing
until such time as a majority member arrives and can take the
chair.
Hearing no objections, we will begin the hearing. In fact,
I will begin part of my statement and enter the balance of it
into the record, because we are going to have a vote--a single
vote--then go about 40, 45 minutes, have another vote, and our
plan is to continue the hearing moving forward, and so we will
not have to take a block of time out.
But we have all realized a significant paradigm shift in
our view of national security since entering the new
millennium; and that is not to say that we haven't been faced
with similar challenges in the past, and we have experienced a
number of conventional conflicts in the last century, from
World War I to Desert Storm.
Guerilla warfare and insurgencies, counterinsurgencies have
pocked the globe from El Salvador to Zimbabwe to Mongolia.
Terrorism frequents nightly news reports and the daily papers
with hijackings, bombings, hostage taking, and murders.
While these conflicts ran the spectrum of conflict, our
national military strategy continues--or continued to that time
along Cold War lines of thinking, focusing on the need to
respond to major conventional conflicts. Terrorism was treated
as a law enforcement issue and national security
responsibilities remained fairly well delineated among agencies
with little crossover or communication.
That bell signals the start of the first vote. The
intention is that the chairman will go vote first and then he
will come in and take my place while I go to the vote. And I
will, without objection, submit my statement for the record.
Hearing no objection, so ordered.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller can be found in the
Appendix on page 32.]
Mr. Miller. And I would like to welcome our witnesses
today: Mr. Alexander, from Longwood University; Mr. Dreifus,
founder and CEO of Dreifus Associates; Mr. Robb, thank you,
sir; and Mr. Hartung.
I do not know if there is a--if you, among yourselves, have
flipped a coin as to who will begin, but please, if you wish,
you may--I believe we will start alphabetically with Mr.
Alexander. Bet you got that all your life, didn't you?
Mr. Alexander. Yes, sir. It didn't help me a lot; it helps
in the reverse. I usually get the worst jobs because I am
first.
Mr. Miller. Thank you, sir.
STATEMENT OF BEVIN ALEXANDER, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, LONGWOOD
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Alexander. Mr. Chairman, I am going to make a very
short presentation which outlines the principle points of the
paper that I presented to you. There are six points.
Number one: The world has moved entirely away from
conventional warfare because the Global Positioning System, or
GPS, permits weapons to be guided with complete accuracy to any
point on earth.
This has ended the possibility of concentrating military
forces because mass troops become easy targets. Soldiers no
longer can survive on traditional battlefields.
Point number two: Military formations today must be small,
well trained, well armed, mobile, and stealthy. The Army must
be subdivided into combat teams of only a couple dozen or so
soldiers each.
These teams will be extremely lethal, however, because they
can call in powerful weapons on any target. Warfare in the
future will be waged by these small combat teams working in
coordination with other teams, all connected within a network
of computers, radios, and television cameras that will provide
instantaneous communications and quick delivery of bombs and
missiles.
Point three: Because of GPS, military elements must
disperse widely over the landscape. Dispersion has eliminated
the main line of resistance, or MLR, that was a central element
of warfare in the 20th century.
The model of warfare in the future will be indirect strikes
against targets that are ill-defended or not defended at all.
In other words, attacks will avoid enemy strength and strike at
enemy weakness.
Point number four: Indirect surprise attacks and ambushes
were the original forms of warfare, going back to the Stone
Age. They are the only types of attack that will be successful
in the future because direct, obvious attacks can be stopped by
GPS-delivered bombs, rockets, and missiles.
Point number five: Strikes from the air will be delivered
primarily by attack helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles,
or UAVs, such as the Predator and the Reaper, a more heavily-
armed cousin of the Predator. UAVs cost much less than manned
aircraft, like the F-22 Raptor fighter plane, and long-range
bombers. They can operate much closer to combat teams, they can
hover over an area and pick out targets with greater accuracy,
and they can deliver powerful rockets or other weapons.
Drones are already the weapons of choice in Afghanistan.
Predators and Reapers are flying 34 patrols a day in Iraq and
Afghanistan. They are transmitting 16,000 hours of video each
month, some of it directly to troops on the ground.
Point number six: The U.S. military today is still largely
structured to face the conventional armies that existed in the
20th century. This must change. We must return to our oldest
and most successful form of combat: indirect guerilla-like
warfare conducted by small, nearly invisible teams.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Alexander can be found in
the Appendix on page 34.]
Mr. Miller. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Dreifus.
STATEMENT OF HENRY N. DREIFUS, FOUNDER AND CEO, DREIFUS
ASSOCIATES, LTD., INC.
Mr. Dreifus. Good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I also have a statement that I would like to submit, and I
have just a few points that I would like to make. First, Dr.
Alexander, I believe sums it up very, very acutely and
correctly. Everything we know about war is changing. And in
fact, I would posit that we are now in the Internet age of war,
which is even more asymmetric, it is rapidly evolving, and it
is very dynamic.
It is dynamic because it is not just a traditional
battlefield; it is a virtual battlefield. There is going to be
a new high ground, which we need to learn about and gain its
advantage.
It is also propelled by a war of ideas moving at speed that
touches billions of people--and I mean billions of people--in
literally milliseconds. It does not care about sovereign
boundaries. It is leveraged, and a battle can begin and end in
the blink of an eye.
The electronic subversion of Estonia--and just before
Russia went into the Republic of Georgia--they were electronic
attacks that preceded a physical attack, in the case of Russia.
That is going to be the new rule and not the exception.
We are already at war. Imagine one morning--and this is not
that farfetched--that you wake up and you cannot use or trust
the Internet. E-mail and other services we take for granted are
not going to be there for us when we want to use them. Now, one
hour of that may be a nuisance, but what happens when that one
hour becomes one day, and one day becomes one week, and one
week becomes one month? That will severely and massively
disrupt our economy and our security.
The Internet isn't just about e-mail. There are so many
services today that use it that are behind the scenes that get
the job done. TV, for example--when you turn on cable or
regular TV, most of that information is actually digitized
Internet information. When you make a phone call, the backbones
of our networks are Internet. Banking, factories, using your
charge card at a store--that is all relying on the Internet
today.
The economic consequences of losing this kind of capability
are far greater than the current global economic crisis. A loss
of the productivity alone--we lose that Internet--will be much
greater on our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than the current
economic crisis.
What is important to note here is that all the fighter
planes, the submarines, the guns, the tanks, everything we have
got in our arsenal, doesn't help us fight this war. A $200
million, $300 million F-22 Raptor gives you no benefit in
defeating this kind of threat.
I will also posit that this is not just a problem of
defense alone. This has to go across other agencies and other
parts of government and industry.
We are at a disadvantage in our country today because we
have seams. These are seams across--not only inside defense,
but seams across our government. There is high potential for
friction, avoidance, divergence between agencies. There is
infighting, there is conflict, and there is not a common
vision.
And in fact, our enemies count on us not being efficient as
a whole of government. So what we really need is a whole of
government, and it is easy to say but it is probably much
harder to do.
In addition, we also wrestle with an economic dilemma. How
do we prepare and defend for these kinds of future threats,
given we have a limited amount of resources and very high
overheads? And as Dr. Alexander pointed out, we are looking at
an Industrial Age Cold War model.
If we are looking at it today, the conventional thinking is
it is a 15-year business cycle, which means that tomorrow's
technology that is going to be fielded is going to be fought by
our soldiers and warfighters who are still in preschool today,
and most likely these will be obsolete weapons and they will be
combating a challenge and a threat that may not be there.
What we have is also an idea that Defense thinks that
bigger is better. I would suggest to the committee that faster,
not bigger, is better. Faster is also less expensive.
Today you have got a Hobson's choice: conform to the
Defense Department you have or risk having nothing at all. I
believe you need to change this from the Hobson model to a new
model. Part of the way you do that is to embrace a digital
mindset.
Right now we think in an analog--an Industrial Age--
mindset. There is much we can do to fuse our agencies and our
workforce; not just our military, but across the entire
government. And using Information Age tools and applying them,
whether it is wikis, and blogs, and even Facebook and social
networking tools, that will make our government more efficient
and more effective to fight this kind of enemy that attacks in
milliseconds.
The summary of my points are that the unconventional is
already the conventional. Information travels at the speed of
light, and so does our enemy. It impacts billions of people
within seconds, and it is important to note that millions of
people each day are joining the Internet and becoming online.
It does not respect geographies and sovereignty.
And we need to find and understand that new high ground in
the digital battlespace. That is going to be challenging and
dynamic, but that is what we have to do.
I humbly suggest as a nation that our government needs to
think differently and seamlessly. Quite frankly, an analog
government in the digital age is rapidly becoming obsolete.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dreifus can be found in the
Appendix on page 42.]
STATEMENT OF HON. ADAM SMITH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM WASHINGTON,
CHAIRMAN, TERRORISM, UNCONVENTIONAL THREATS AND CAPABILITIES
SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Smith. [Presiding.] Thank you very much.
And I apologize for the comings and goings here. We have
our budgets being debated today, which means every 40 minutes
we have one vote, and it has got people moving around.
And I apologize that we don't have other members here. They
are dashing in between those votes as well. We thought it best
to keep going instead of just breaking the hearing up to the
point where we couldn't keep track of anything.
So that is what we are attempting to do, and I appreciate
your patience. And I do appreciate the witnesses being here. I
apologize for being late.
With that, we will turn to Mr. John Robb for your opening
statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the
Appendix on page 31.]
STATEMENT OF JOHN ROBB, WARFARE THEORIST, AUTHOR
Mr. Robb. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the
invitation.
Thank you Mr. Natter and congratulations on the new job.
My focus is on small group warfare and how small groups can
leverage new technologies--networks--to take on nation states
and win. We have seen a lot of innovation in the theory of
warfare over the last five, six years, and we are about to see
a big boost in that capability.
One of the big reasons that things are going to become more
difficult for us is that we are caught in an economic crisis.
And my friend, Nassim Taleb, wrote a great book, ``The Black
Swan,'' I recommend it. And we have been looking at the global
system as a dynamically unstable system for quite some time
that has been weakening nation states and their ability to
control their borders, their finances, their economy, their
media, et cetera. And this dynamically unstable system is prone
to access.
Unfortunately, we have added some bad feedback loops. We
have added too much debt--not just in the U.S. government,
across the board. We are running at about 350 percent of GDP in
debt right now. That is above the 150 percent that is
sustainable. It puts us about $20 trillion in the hole.
Last time it peaked at this point it was 290 percent or so
in 1929, and it got run down. That has to be taken out before
things return to some semblance of normal.
The other part is the derivative side, and I trained on the
Street to, you know, do the derivatives trading. Luckily I
didn't hop into Citi Bank to do that. But essentially it is
just too complex.
My brother-in-law runs--he is chief programmer for
RiskMetrics, and, you know, I have always been debating him and
telling him that his assumptions--his core assumptions--that he
is writing into the software are basically incorrect. And that
has essentially proven true over time.
No one knows which levers to pull in order to stabilize the
system. Until we get the financial system back to just simple
vanilla options and basic economic instruments--utility status
for banks--that complexity is going to, you know, drive us into
the hole.
So from my perspective, we are headed towards almost an
inevitable global depression, and the impact on the government
is, of course, smaller budgets. You know, I was at the
Highlands Forum about a year or so ago and they asked me for
outside-the-box projection. I said, ``Get used to operating on
50 percent of your current budget 5 years from now. Get lean.''
Of course, they looked at me like I had bats flying out of my
ears, but you know, knowing that the dynamic global system is
going to come off the rails is giving me the kind of insight to
project that.
The other part is that as you see the financial systems and
the economic systems of marginal states gutted due to the
depression environment, you will see the growth in small
groups, for motivations across the board, whether they are
gangs, whether they are tribes, whether they are different
flavors of Jihadi--whatever group that provides the services
and security that keep people alive and progressing is going
to, you know, step into the fold.
And these groups are super-empowered with new technology
being driven at the rate of Moore's Law, doubling in
capability. That applies to biotech. You know, what used to
take five Ph.D.s a week five years ago is done by a lab
technician with a lab on a chip today.
Access to networks we can find out exactly how to do the
best Improvised Explosive Device (IED) production, and then
access the global economy, which is a phone call away, as the
Somali pirates just found out--you take a Saudi tanker, you
call up the company that runs it, get money. Those groups are
proliferating from Mexico to Pakistan to Nigeria.
They are making money; they are getting better at warfare;
they are operating using an open source fashion where they are
coordinating their activities. And the innovation rates and the
technologies and capabilities that they are fielding is 20 to
30 times faster than we saw with the Irish Republican Army
(IRA) and, you know, traditional groups.
This depressionary environment--this economic calamity--is
going to drive that trend line forward at a very rapid rate
just at the very moment we have fewer resources to combat it.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Robb can be found in the
Appendix on page 48.]
Mr. Smith. I don't think I can say thank you. It is just
too depressing. We appreciate your analysis, and I think there
are certainly key lessons to be learned from that, and I think
you are more accurate than less, certainly, in where we are
headed and what we need to do, so I appreciate that.
Mr. Hartung.
STATEMENT OF WILLIAM D. HARTUNG, DIRECTOR, ARMS AND SECURITY
INITIATIVE, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION
Mr. Hartung. Yes. Thanks for the invitation to be here
today. I am very interested to hear what my colleagues on the
panel have had to say.
I am going to talk almost entirely about resources.
President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and
fighting terrorism more broadly is going to be an expensive
proposition, not only for additional troops in Afghanistan,
additional economic assistance, and it is going to be in a
context of a deficit that this year could reach $1.8 trillion--
we will stay over $1 trillion next year. So the idea of putting
this on our great national credit card--the debt--does not
really seem like it is an option for us.
The drawdown in Iraq is going to be complicated; it is not
going to be something that happens overnight. There is going to
be costs for resetting the force. There is going to be expanded
training missions. So I don't think we can look to that as a
source of resources to fund some of the increases in these
other areas.
So I would argue the best place to find resources, so we
don't ramp up the deficit, would be to restructure our national
security budget--not just the Pentagon, but the State
Department, development assistance, the whole range of civilian
and military tools that we use to carry out our foreign policy.
I think we need a dramatic rebalancing of how we spend that
money.
And in order to do that, I think there is some obvious
places that we could cut weapons systems out of the current
budget. I know the administration is, as we speak,
contemplating just such cuts. I am encouraged that President
Obama, at least for starters, stood up to the services' wish
lists when they were hoping to ask for $50 billion, $60 billion
more than he ultimately set as his top line for the 2010
budget.
And I think some of the places where we would cut would be,
for example, you have F-22 combat aircraft in an era when our
main adversaries in many cases don't even have an air force. We
don't need to purchase the most expensive fighter plane ever
built, which has limited ground attack capability, which takes
funds away from other military and civilian priorities.
The F-35, the next generation fighter, is being run ahead
much too rapidly; it hasn't been tested yet. We may well buy
$57 billion worth of F-35s before we have even finished
testing, which just means any problem that comes up will have
to be dealt with in some sort of expensive retrofit.
The DDG-1000 Destroyer is going to come in at $3.6 billion
each. I think that is an expensive way to have a ship that can,
you know, put some ammunition and missiles onto land to support
our troops. I think there has got to be a better way to do
that. Likewise, the Virginia-class submarine--a lot of the
missions that it has been tasked with I think can be done more
cheaply with existing submarines with some adaptations.
I think the biggest areas where we can save money are
nuclear weapons where, in keeping with the president's goal of
getting rid of these things all together and the practical
steps to get there, we could probably save on the order of $10
billion a year on operations and procurement costs. And I think
in the short term one of the most important things we could do
is forego spending money on new nuclear weapons factories,
which the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security
Administration is proposing to do. That makes no sense at a
time when we are going to be radically reducing nuclear force.
Finally, missile defense: I don't foresee an instance where
a country like North Korea or Iran is going to risk ending
their country as they know it in order to launch a ballistic
missile at the United States. Even if they chose to do so and
they used simple decoys, the tens and hundreds of billions of
dollars we have spent gives us no reliable expectation that
this system is going to work.
I think we could have a research program. We could look at
mid-range defenses which, I think, have more promise, and I
think we would be able to cut probably $7 billion a year.
So in closing I would just say, you know, where should we
spend this money? Secretary Gates has made a good point about
the lack of balance in our security portfolio. He has talked
about the need for more spending on the State Department. He
made an interesting comparison. He said, ``Well, you know, it
takes more personnel to run one aircraft carrier task force
than we have trained foreign service officers.''
So we have 11 aircraft carrier task forces; we only have
one State Department. I think we have to start righting that
imbalance.
The president has talked about doubling foreign aid by
2015. I think that is a worthy goal. And yet, he is already
running into problems in the Congress about whether this is the
time to do that, can we afford to do that? And I think there is
obvious--and some of the areas I talked about where we can find
funding to do that.
I think, finally, on a smaller scale, the aid program for
Pakistan that has been proposed, $1.5 billion a year for 5
years, is relatively small amount compared to the savings we
could get from cutting unnecessary weapons programs. So I think
that is a good summary of my prepared statement, and I look
forward to the discussion we are all going to have.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hartung can be found in the
Appendix on page 52.]
Mr. Smith. Thank you. I want to follow up on that
particular point, because I very much agree with you, that is
one of the battles we fight in this committee is on the
resources and the funding.
You know, we have got a lot of the big, expensive programs,
and you have mentioned, I think, the million highlights on
that, whereas, on the other hand, if we are going to be
fighting more irregular types of warfare there are other places
that we need to spend our money--on our special operations
forces, on human terrain teams, on asymmetric warfare, cyber-
security, a bunch of different areas.
I guess the challenge that always comes back is the
potential threat from Russia and China. I mean, I have my own
personal answer, and that is that diplomatically, you know, we
need to find a way to peacefully coexist with those countries,
and I don't see any reason in the current environment why we
can't.
But still, it drives much of what we do at the full
committee level. You know, we are constantly getting updates
on, ``Here is what, you know, here is what Russia is talking
about building. China is building submarines. You know, they
are going to build the--we have to build the F-22 to respond to
whatever it is they are building.'' And fundamentally I don't
accept that analysis, but I am curious how you would counter
that argument in terms of what we need to do, and I see Mr.
Robb seems to have an interest in this as well, so I would be
curious in any other comments from any of the other panelists
on that subject.
Mr. Hartung. Well, I think one thing to consider is that
the same economic pressures we have are coming down, I think,
in multiple fashions on Russia, on China. I think if we can
work together cooperatively to deal with some of the economic
problems of the world, to deal with things like climate change,
to find some constructive areas, I think that will help dampen
down the military competition.
I also think that for the most part we still have
significant technological edge. I think in the case of China,
at the most seem to want to be maybe a regional player, not a
global threat to the United States. I think Russia still--
especially with unpredictable oil prices--I don't think really
has a very predictable ability to invest substantially and
consistently in its military forces.
And I think to the extent that President Obama reaches out
on things like nuclear arms control through the kind of meeting
he had with Mr. Medvedev just the other day, I think we have
ways to leverage these things politically and through economic
relationships so that we don't have to run a sort of
traditional arms race. And I think if we try to do that we are
going to miss, you know, the real threats that we face.
Mr. Smith. And I think that is one of the critical policy
choices that we face, is to avoid getting into that type of
arms race with two countries. And neither country, at this
point--China or Russia--has an expansionist approach.
It is not like the Soviet Union when they were trying to
find client states all over the world, you know, and to build
up their ideology and their military reach. I mean, mostly, you
know, China in particular is trying to expand their economic
influence, but we can compete with them on that without an F-
22.
Mr. Alexander, you have a comment?
Mr. Alexander. Mr. Chairman, I think the point that has
been made about that is quite interesting. However, I want Mike
to make a point that hasn't been made so far, and that is that
we can not fight a war against a nuclear power. We are never
going to be able to fight a war against a nuclear power.
There is not possibility of us ever fighting a war against
China or the Soviet Union, because the possibilities of
engaging in such a war are so devastating that they are never
going to happen. So the only way we are going to fight these
countries, if we have to fight them, will be by surrogates. So
the idea that we have to set up defensing programs to defend
against a submarine of the Chinese, for example, or a aircraft
of Russia is absolutely false.
We do not have to fight these countries because we can not
fight these countries, and we will never be able to fight these
countries.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Robb----
Mr. Robb. No. I agree with that, and that, I think, was a
point from my friend, the historian, Martin Van Grebald. He has
written about that extensively. I agree with that.
I think the big problem with China is not that it would be
a peer competitor, it is that it rests on a very thin measure
of legitimacy, its ability to deliver growth--economic growth--
to its middle class. And now that is gone. Mercantless powers
like China are getting hit--they are getting devastated by this
depressionary environment. And that fear we should have
relative to China is that they will fall apart in a disorderly
way, and that is all small group stuff, for the most part--
small group warfare.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely.
Mr. Dreifus.
Mr. Dreifus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with my
colleagues here on the panel. It is not just China falling
apart. It is Russia falling apart. How close are we to that
trip wire where we see Russia unwind?
And quite frankly, the point about looking at the kinds of
weapons we have, I think you have to look at the entire
portfolio and say, ``What is it that we are going to need in
this new era, this new age of warfare,'' and saying, ``Are any
of these things the kinds of weapons we need?''
Because if they are not, then what are they and what are
they going to be to better defend this country? And quite
frankly, if it is a 15-year business cycle to get them into
place, the current construct and model isn't going to get us
there fast enough.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely. Thank you very much.
I have more questions, but I will do those in a second
round. And we will call on Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for your
indulgence; apologize, again, for having to depart a few
minutes ago.
Mr. Alexander, would you say that the United States should
completely ignore near-peer conventional capabilities?
Mr. Alexander. Should we completely ignore what, sir?
Mr. Miller. Near-peer conventional capabilities.
Mr. Alexander. I don't understand the term ``near-peer.''
Mr. Miller. The identical capabilities that our peers may
have.
Mr. Alexander. In other words, they have equal weapons to
our own?
We do not have to fight an enemy with equal weapons,
because there are no countries with equal weapons to ours in
the first place. And the likelihood of China, for example,
developing these weapons is nil. Russia is in the process of
upgrading its military, but it is nowhere close to being peer
to the United States.
So I don't see there is any possibility of there being any
near-peer confrontation. And what I said just a moment ago is
that we can't fight them anyway. There is no possibility of our
fighting these countries because if we lose--we found this out
in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis--if we find ourselves in a
position of losing to a conventional power we will always use
the atomic weapon. And the same would apply to Russia and to
China.
So for that reason, it is impossible. So it is an illusion
to think that we will ever be able to fight another country on
conventional warfare. Conventional warfare can no longer be
fought for that very reason.
Mr. Miller. Thank you. Any other comments?
Sir.
Mr. Dreifus. At the risk of being controversial or
unconventional in thinking, when you talk about near-peer you
are talking about, you know, like weapons. What happens in the
case where they are using un-like weapons, and those are
weapons that may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or $50
million, or use Federal Express as their delivery
infrastructure for a biochemical or some other attack of our
nation?
Those types asymmetric attacks, I don't think that we are
even in the same league of thinking about in peer-to-peer kinds
of combat. And that creates a different kind of thought process
as you look at trying to defend against these new kinds of
threats. It is not the big countries that necessarily are going
to be the problems; it might be organizations that aren't even
a country that are going to create the new challenges that face
us.
Mr. Miller. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Marshall.
Mr. Marshall. If I might, Mr. Chairman, I thought that the
title of this hearing was intriguing and certainly wanted to
come down and read the materials and listen to the witnesses. I
was wondering how the panel was gathered and the purpose of the
hearing. Was it to hear truly unconventional thoughts about how
we ought to organize ourselves?
Mr. Smith. Yes. These are people who look at the future of
warfare, not the present, and the premise of the hearing,
basically, is that we are in a transitional moment in terms of,
you know, where we are going in terms of our military threats,
but we are still, to some degree, stuck in the past, focused on
a conventional, you know, peer-to-peer war that many of our
weapons systems and many of the ways that the DOD has organized
is around that philosophy, and that we need to change that
philosophy.
It is of particular interest to this committee because,
well, we have jurisdiction of the Special Operations Command
(SOCOM), which does a fair amount of unconventional warfare,
but we also have jurisdiction on cyber-security, I.T., and
science and technology and the future of where the military
needs to go. So since we know--I think; there are those who
disagree--but since we know that we are not going to be where
we were, where are we going to be and how do we need to equip
our military to confront those threats? That is the main
purpose of having folks who have studied those areas.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you for that clarification.
Now, I guess I would ask whether or not the panel is aware
of people who purport to have expertise like you have who have
a difference of opinion concerning how we ought to organize
ourselves for future combat. In other words, are there people,
Mr. Alexander, who differ with your view about appropriate
resource allocation and preparation for--realistic preparation
for the conflicts this country might have?
Mr. Alexander. In other words, are there other people--
specialists in this field--who differ from this position?
Mr. Marshall. Yes, sir.
Mr. Alexander. I don't know of any, sir. I mean, it strikes
me, we are dealing with a set of facts. And the set of facts
are that the wars that we are fighting now are not going to be
the wars that we fought in the 20th century. We cannot fight
those wars any longer.
Therefore, the set of facts that we are facing are pretty
elementary. There are no arguments, as far as I can see, with
any of us as regards what we face. The question is, how do we
restructure the military in order to do it?
Mr. Marshall. So you see no likelihood of a Desert Storm-
type of conventional fight--it was brief, but you see no
likelihood of that?
Mr. Alexander. We haven't fought a conventional war since
Korea. The United States has not fought a conventional war
since Korea. All the wars that we have fought since Korea have
been unconventional wars, and we fought an asymmetrical enemy--
every single one of them.
And we are trying to fight these wars, still, with a
structure that was based around the World War II, Korean War
paradigm, and that is not the way we can fight these wars. And
the point I guess I am trying to make is that we have not been
doing that for over half a century.
Mr. Marshall. So you see no possibility of conflict--
military conflict--with China. You think that if there is a
conflict, that it will be surrogates?
Mr. Alexander. It would have to be surrogates, yes, sir. We
fought--and I was in the Korean War. I spent a year and a half
in Korea, and I am quite familiar with the Chinese. And we
fought a conventional war against the Chinese. We actually lost
that war.
The reason we lost it was because we were fighting with our
conventional weapons and they were fighting us with
unconventional weapons, and we basically sacrificed our air
power and our artillery, which was superior, to their bunkers,
which were superior to our artillery. So we were fighting,
essentially, an unconventional war even then.
But the fact is that as far as I can see, there is no
possibility whatsoever of us ever fighting a war with China
because once we ever get into a conventional war with another
country--that is assuming that there are such armies that
exist, and they do not--but if they ever did exist, then we
would instantly enter into a stalemate, and the stalemate would
end any possibility. And what would then happen, if one side
then became ahead, then the other side would elect for an
atomic bomb.
And that is why we can never fight that war. And anybody
who is looked at the military knows that this is absolutely the
facts. There is no argument as far as I can see in anybody--any
of my peers--who contest that argument whatsoever. We have had
mutually assured destruction since 1962.
Mr. Marshall. So if there is going to be a fight, you know,
by surrogates.
Mr. Alexander. Yes, sir.
Mr. Marshall. Can you give an example of what that might
be?
Mr. Alexander. Well, we had one in Georgia just the other
day, didn't we? We had a case where Georgia was trying to oust
Russia from the territory that they had occupied in Georgia.
Now, they attacked--they tried to do it in a direct,
conventional way and they got socked in their nose, like quick,
and their army disintegrated in no time at all.
Mr. Marshall. Mr. Chairman, are you going to let me go on,
or do you want to just hold----
Mr. Smith. I think I would like to keep it to five minutes
so we can get to everyone. We will come back through.
And if I may, just in following up on your question, there
is considerable disagreement about what the implications of all
of these changes mean, and I think these four gentlemen in
their opening statements certainly had differences about where
we should go, how we should restructure the military in light
of the changes.
What I think--and I agree with Mr. Alexander--what there is
no dispute about is that asymmetrical warfare has become vastly
more important than it was, and conventional warfare vastly
less important, and how do we change and restructure?
And there is a lot of difference of opinions on this
committee and elsewhere about that, and that is what we are
trying to get to.
I think Mr. Thornberry is next.
Mr. Thornberry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I appreciate you all's indulgence as we come and go because
of votes. But let me ask this: I have heard from a number of
people that essentially great power warfare is obsolete because
of nuclear weapons. Does that mean that, given back to some of
what is in the news today, if our nuclear deterrent is reduced
to a certain level, does that put great power warfare back on
the table, or is there a threshold that we need to maintain to
kind of keep that tamped down, I guess, for lack of a better
way to put it?
Mr. Hartung. Well, I would say we have quite a ways to go
before we would reach that point. A lot of people who have
supported President Obama's call for a long-term effort to get
rid of nuclear weapons have talked about something like 1,000
weapons, maybe 600 deployed, 400 in reserve, which would be
more than enough to deter any country from thinking of
attacking us.
I think where you get into a problem is if you are going to
want to eliminate nuclear weapons all together, what kind of
political arrangements, what kind of security arrangements,
what kind of verification arrangements would you need to assure
yourself that that would be workable? So I think that is a
question for down the road; not that we shouldn't think about
it now if we are going to--if these things are going to be on
the table, but I think in the foreseeable future our deterrent
will be there even in the context of the kind of reductions
that President Obama and Mr. Medvedev may come to in the next
couple years.
Mr. Thornberry. Let me ask you, Mr. Robb, because I read
your book a year or two ago and enjoyed it, but it makes me
think--when I listen or read some of you all's testimony, it
makes me wonder which is the cart and which is the horse, in a
way. Because we talk a lot about, ``Well, we don't need the F-
22 or this that or the other system,'' but as one person
described it in another hearing about a month ago, we seem to
buy stuff and then formulate a strategy from it rather than
formulate a strategy and then buy stuff that fits within that
strategy.
But I just talked to a father yesterday who was darn glad
we had some armored vehicles in Iraq, even though that was a
counterinsurgency, because it meant his son had his ankles
damaged rather than have his, you know, legs blown off. Help me
a little bit here. Given what you know about our system--we are
not really changing the system if we say, ``Cut that airplane
and that Army vehicle,'' are we? Don't we have to start at this
from the beginning? And where is that?
Mr. Robb. Well, personally, I am very much the cynic and I
am certainly outside the system as you can be. I mean, I am
starting companies in the tech sector, so----
I personally don't think the system can be reformed, given
its size, and the amount of money being spent, and the number
of people involved. I had a couple brushes with the contracting
space, and it is byzantine and tremendously, you know, awful. I
couldn't see it actually working in the real commercial sector,
but--and that being said, and I am not trying to be obtuse
here, but you know, if there is a downdraft in the economy and
we do go towards a depressionary environment, the amount of
budget cuts that will inevitably follow may open opportunity to
relook at how we are structured.
You know, I would like to see, obviously, strategy driving
weapons procurement, and you know, I have looked around the DOD
for, you know, where strategy is actually, you know, trying to
be developed, and I can't find much. We don't really have much
of a, you know, a think tank for military theory. We have bits
and pieces of strategy being done in a variety of different
locations, and I haven't found a place that really does high-
quality military theory.
So I don't know if that is not--maybe it is not the answer
you are looking for, or it is just----
Mr. Thornberry. Oh, I am not looking. I mean, I am just
looking at answers.
Mr. Dreifus, do you have something?
Mr. Dreifus. Thank you, sir. There are two points that I
think are appropriate here to suggest. One is that the defense
enterprise, as it is constructed today, is configured as an
output-driven model--how many of this and at what rate of
production?--as opposed to an outcome-driven model. And if you
look at outcome, which is more of a business approach to how
you solve problems--where do I want to end up and how do I get
there the most efficient way--it is a very different type of
engagement model.
So the metrics that are used and applied in the convening
of the defense approach, which is, as Mr. Robb also pointed
out, a very tactical approach and not a strategic approach,
puts us at an absolute disadvantage.
And so what has to happen is, the culture that drives this
way of doing business needs to be rethought, and rethought in a
very dynamic way that says, ``If we really want to figure out
where it is we want to go,'' if Dr. Alexander's position that
we will never fight these kinds of wars again is where we are
going to end up, it is having almost a Solarium-like rethink of
this country's defense concept, and then how do we get there
through very discreet and very actionable steps.
Mr. Alexander. May I say something?
Mr. Smith. Quickly, if I may. Sir, if I may, if you would
do it quickly, I want to--we have got the five-minute rule----
Mr. Alexander. I believe exactly what Mr. Dreifus says is
absolutely correct. What I think we need to see is the reality
that it is not the equipment that we are concerned about, it is
the kind of wars we are going to fight that we are concerned
about. I don't know that anybody at this table, and certainly
myself, is talking about doing away with any of these weapons.
I want to point out, to me the important factor is that we
are not going to fight the same kind of wars that we fought
before, and we need to organize our military in such a way.
Now, your young man that you were talking about in Afghanistan
who wants an armored vehicle--I think it is an absolutely
valid--I entirely agree with him. He should have that.
But that doesn't mean that we have to organize our military
around protecting a young man in Iraq or Afghanistan; we have
to figure out how we are going to structure our military to
fight the future kind of challenges we face. And that, to me,
is the great distinction.
Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ellsworth.
Mr. Ellsworth. Mr. Chairman, sorry for being late. I am
going to pass at this time.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Conaway.
Mr. Conaway. Thank you, gentlemen.
If I could take interest in your comments, given that what
we fought in Iraq, what we are fighting in Afghanistan, what
would appear to be, over the relatively--future here is fights
where it is conducted in and amongst noncombatants, civilian
populations, where the government doesn't have a great deal of
reach and you need an exquisite combination of State Department
and, you know, nation-building, for lack of a better phrase, as
well as the fighters and the folks who protect them. We don't
have a good model to make that work.
The president's new plan says he is going to send hundreds
of State Department people into Afghanistan. I suspect that is
going to be at the point of a gun. But how do we--can you
configure a military-State Department force that can do what
needs to be done with the bad guys and also do what needs to be
done with the good guys, and not offend the good guys while you
are getting the bad guys, if that makes any sense?
Mr. Robb. One thing that I have found that is getting a lot
of traction, at least mentally, among people who are doing
development and stability operations is this idea of a
resilient community focusing on the hyper-local, trying to
build a community such that can produce most of its food,
energy, and you know, defense within the confines of the
community.
Mr. Conaway. Yes. That is what we all want to do, but who
does that? Is it a hybrid entity that would do that? Who does
that?
Mr. Robb. Probably it would end up being a hybrid entity.
There is lots of great tech; there is lots of great
methodologies that need to be brought together to be able to do
that. And the boots on the ground actually dealing at that
hyper-local level need to get more training and support in
terms of being able to operate in a solo, you know, difficult
decision-making environment.
Go ahead.
Mr. Alexander. The point that I don't think has been made
very clearly here is that there is a total distinction between
winning a battle or a campaign by military forces and the kind
of operation to bring peace, or whatever you call it, after
that. And we got very confused in Iraq on that, and there are
two different kinds of problems that we face.
The military problem is relatively simple; I think we know
what we have got to do in order to defeat an enemy, and we have
got the system now working, and I believe it is going to come.
The question that you seem to be asking is, what do we do with
that country after we have essentially conquered it, or taken
it over? Well, that is a political----
Mr. Conaway. Let me disagree with you, Mr. Alexander. I
mean, we are going to have that issue exactly in Afghanistan.
We can't bifurcate the two; we can't wait till we have wiped
out the Taliban and al Qa'ida and then start, you know, helping
these provinces rebuild themselves. You have got to do that
concurrent.
Mr. Alexander. You have to do it concurrently.
Mr. Conaway. And you have got folks who aren't real good at
toting weapons who need to be the----
Mr. Alexander. I entirely agree with you, and we have to
make a decision what we are going to do in every single case,
don't we?
Mr. Conaway. Right.
Mr. Alexander. In the case, for example, of Afghanistan,
are we going to build a nation or are we going to take down the
Taliban and al Qa'ida? That is the question that we need to
make a decision on as a nation----
Mr. Conaway. Let Mr. Dreifus have a whack at it.
Mr. Dreifus. Thank you, sir. I think what you are asking
for is a type of engaged government person that doesn't exist
yet. We are not looking for boots on the ground, per se. We
might be looking for shoes on the ground, in some of these
cases, where we are looking at generating sustained, enduring
success in these provinces and these hyper-local scenarios. And
that means fusing teams of military and non-military people who
need to train together, equip together, and be given the skills
to work together, which doesn't exist in this government.
We have economic officers in the Commerce Department; we
have the Trade Development Agency; we have the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID); we have alphabet
letters of many different organizations, but when do you bring
them together? How do you converge them?
Mr. Conaway. Exactly.
Mr. Dreifus. And we need to teach and train that. And I
think that is--it is not about warfighting; it is about
peacemaking, and creating those enduring outcomes that are
really measured by success in both military and, more
importantly, non-military terms.
Mr. Hartung. Yeah, I would just say, I think we need to be
modest in our goals. You know, I don't think we are going to
make Afghanistan into some sort of model democracy. I think
aiming for stability is already a pretty high bar, and within
that it is clear to me that we need more civilian resources,
but I think you are absolutely right, how we configure those,
how they work together is--I think really hasn't been clearly
laid out.
Mr. Conaway. I guess our point is, if we are looking 10 or
15 years down the road, we want to--do we want to build that
capacity? And we are not going to have it in Afghanistan,
because we are too far into the ruckus now to make that happen.
I guess if you could get the Peace Corps and the 101st
Airborne to train together and deploy together we will be in
great shape.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. No, I think that is a very, you know, compelling
point, and it gets to the resource issue. And following up a
little bit on what Mr. Thornberry said, I mean, you could even
go, I mean, up to the F-22 and you can sort of look at it and
say, you know, within Afghanistan and Iraq and what we are
doing right now, you know, what good is that?
But if we are looking at, you know, a future conflict with
Iran or a future conflict with North Korea, they have surface-
to-air missiles that could threaten air dominance, and we are
able to do what we do--I mean, we just--we take air dominance
completely for granted now, the idea that we wouldn't be able
to fly a military plane anywhere we want within our military
zones. It is just something that is, you know, totally assumed.
Future conflicts might have a different situation. And
don't get me wrong, I am looking for places to save money, for
all the reasons that Mr. Robb outlined. We just lost about $16
trillion, so we are a little short at the moment, you know, but
I think we also have to be mindful of what the challenges are
out there, and it is not as simple as saying, ``Well, we are no
longer fighting a conventional war so we no longer need
conventional weapons.''
And I understand, Mr. Alexander, that it is not your point.
But I think it is worth making, that we still have to, you
know, make that consideration, which bleeds into what Mr.
Conaway was talking about. Which was, okay, if we are still in
a situation where it is conceivable that we are going to need a
top-of-the-line fighter for air dominance, that we are going to
need, you know, the Stryker vehicles, for instance, that have
given our brigades--combat brigades--far greater capabilities
than they have ever had before, we are going to need all that
stuff. And oh, by the way, we are also going to need to build
the 101st Airborne-Peace Corps. I think we will let you take
ownership of that, and we will generate that unit.
You know, but it is on point. I mean, it is something that,
you know, when we went into Iraq and there was, you know, the
argument about, you know, we just spent an election campaign
talking about how we are not going to do nation-building, we
are not going to do peacekeeping, and Mr. Rumsfeld was very
pointed about saying, ``That is not what we do; that is not our
mission,'' all right?
Then we got into Iraq and he wanted complete control over
that mission with his military that wasn't trained to do that
and didn't do that. And I don't think, ideally, anybody who
spends any time around the military would say, ``That is what
we ought to train our military to do.'' I mean, they are going
to have to do pieces of it, but I think if you are looking at
the classic nation-building peacekeeping mission, you are
talking far more, you know, development people, State
Department people, justice people, agriculture people stuff
military doesn't do, but then you are talking about a hell of a
lot of money. I mean, our military is incredibly capable right
now, but it is incredibly expensive.
So if all those other entities that I just mentioned have
to be close to as capable, we don't have that kind of cash,
which is a very long way of walking around, if we are looking
to save money--looking to save right now, and not just limiting
it to the Defense Department--if we are talking about--for all
the different pieces, what is the most cost-effective way to do
this--with one final point--admitting that one of the most
cost-effective ways to do this is to get out of the business of
doing it, is to find a way where we don't believe that our
national security is completely dependent upon showing up in
the middle of some godforsaken country and taking it over and
being responsible for it for the next 50 years.
How do we make all of that come together? Mr. Dreifus, I
will----
Mr. Dreifus. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
There are two points I think you could use here very
constructively. First is, you have got one other weapon in the
arsenal, and that is American industry and industries in the
region where you are working. Economic security is one of those
legs of this challenge, and to bring business along with that
provides an enduring outcome in that country is something which
doesn't cost the government anything and can create a long-term
better future. Again, what are they looking for in these
countries? That there is hope, there is stability, there is a
better future for them, and a better outcome.
The second point that I think is important is understanding
how to prevent having to go into these places, to detect early,
before a country or a part of the world gets into trouble, and
having other types of interventions. And so prevention is a lot
less expensive than the cure.
Mr. Smith. Amen to that. And I will just say that I think
those are a couple areas that we have this--I mean, as much as,
you know, the counterinsurgency stuff at the Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) does in areas before they blow into full-
scale--I can't say that word, so I won't--conflagration--I
always get the syllables mixed up there. We have got SOCOM out
there doing it, and a couple dozen of them, you know, can make
a huge difference in a country, as opposed to having 175,000
troops in Iraq.
Connected to that is something that I am very concerned
about our government right now: We don't really have a global
development strategy. We spend an enormous amount of money on
global development in a variety of different ways, but it is in
a very chaotic, nonstrategic way that is ineffective.
If we did that better--to some degree that is one of the
thoughts behind the Millennium Challenge Corporation, is that
it would go in and work with the country to try to not just
give them money, but to go in and try to help them develop an
overall, you know, development strategy to keep their country
from falling apart for a relatively small amount of money.
Mr. Miller? Okay.
Mr. Marshall, we are back to you already.
Mr. Marshall. That didn't take too long. All right, back to
the surrogate question, and you picked Georgia as an example--
pretty remote; we didn't get involved. Can you imagine a
surrogate fight where we might be involved and, for example, we
have already mentioned this, would be very interested in
providing air dominance for our surrogates on the ground or for
our forces on the ground?
Mr. Alexander--Dr. Alexander.
Well, I asked you during my last line of questioning to
imagine surrogate fights of the future, since you have decided
we are not going to have a fight with China directly because of
the problem with nuclear weapons.
And the surrogate fight in the future that you mentioned in
your testimony and you mentioned a minute ago was Georgia. We
didn't get involved in that. Let us assume we do get involved
in a surrogate fight in the future. We are going to want to
have air dominance; we are going to want to put our people on
the ground and be able to protect them.
You describe a world in which military units are not going
to be able mass because precision weaponry will simply destroy
that unit if it masses. So we are going to want a world in
which nobody can use precision weaponry against us--we are
effectively able to stop the precision weaponry, we are the
only ones with the precision weaponry. Is that a world that is
too far?
Mr. Alexander. Well, I don't see that we would be the only
ones with precision weaponry. I think that the rest of the
world can develop precision weaponry just as well as we.
Mr. Marshall. And we won't be able to develop counter
measures?
Mr. Alexander. Could they develop counter measures or could
we?
Mr. Marshall. We have attempted as best we can to maintain
our technological edge because we are not going back to
Industrial Age warfare, and if we did there is no way we are
just going to throw hundreds of thousands of American young men
and women into harm's way and just lose all kinds of--we are
just not going to do that, and we know we are not going to do
that.
So we attempt, as best we can, to maintain significant
technological advantage over our enemies, and that includes
both the ability to hit and strike and the ability to develop
counter measures that keep them from being able to hit and
strike us in return, which means we spend a lot of money on
things like the F-22, et cetera, with the idea that we will be
able to maintain that capacity.
Mr. Alexander. I don't think the F-22 would necessarily
affect that. What we are going to have to do in terms of
defending against a technologically advanced country that might
want to attack us, we want to develop a weapon that will do
that. Well, the F-22 Raptor is a fighter plane, and it has a
tremendously effective role as a fighter plane if you are
fighting other countries that have fighter planes or have
targets that a fighter plane could strike.
If you are talking about the surrogate situation that you
mentioned--let us take a case that we do know about----
Mr. Marshall. If I could interrupt--now, it seems to me
that Russia and China are going to continue to develop--they
are continuing to develop their own fighters, which will be
available to their surrogates, and so if we sit back and do not
develop, the next generation of American fighters that have a
technological edge over the next generation of Chinese or
Russian fighters, we are essentially conceding air dominance to
whoever the surrogate is representing those two countries. Is
that not correct?
Mr. Alexander. If we assume that we will be fighting using
those kind of aircraft. I don't believe----
Mr. Marshall. We are assuming that air dominance is
something that we are interested in. You have posited the
possibility that if we get into a fight with one of those
superpowers, those who could conceivably contest our air
dominance, it will be through surrogates. They will want to
provide air dominance for their surrogates. That is a no-
brainer, it seems to me.
And so we are in this posture of trying to anticipate the
ways in which they will seek to support their surrogates in
combat against our surrogates, I guess----
Mr. Alexander. I suspect that if we get a situation like
that, that the aircraft that they will be using against us will
be UAVs, not a F-22. And I suspect that the--for a number of
reasons. One reason is it is a whole lot cheaper, and the other
is that it is a lot more effective.
So the idea that an extremely advanced fighter plane is
going to be the wave of the future, I don't think that is
correct. I think the wave of the future is a Predator.
Mr. Marshall. So we are on the same page, in the sense that
we can anticipate the need, whether it is by developing some
other platform besides the F-22--maybe an unmanned platform--we
can anticipate the need to continue technological development
that assures our air dominance.
Mr. Alexander. Yes, sir. I think we definitely have to do
that. And I think we should always try to be the extreme top
nation in the world in terms of technology. We have it now and
I think we need to keep it. But the weapons that we are going
to do it with are not the weapons that we have today.
Mr. Hartung. Well, I would just add----
Mr. Smith. Oh, I am sorry.
Mr. Hartung [continuing]. To the extent that there is
surrogate warfare, it is going to be asymmetric. It is going to
be guerilla warfare, it is going to be trying to get ahold of
weapons of mass destruction. I don't think it is going to be
kind of air force-on-air force and army-on-army, so I think
some of these capabilities will be less relevant than they
might have been in a different time period.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Marshall has a quick----
Mr. Marshall. I appreciate that. It is somewhat similar to
what we are facing now in Pakistan and Afghanistan. And we have
decided that--I think rightly so--our objective is to deny al
Qa'ida the space to sort of gather and develop its capacity to
continue to do damage against the West. And in order to do
that, air dominance is something that is critically important
to us. I mean, you just can not survive in those territories
without air dominance.
So we can argue about whether the F-22 or some other
platform is the correct choice, but we are going to have to
concede that at least for the near term, we have got to spend a
lot of money on air dominance. Wouldn't you agree?
Mr. Hartung. Well, I don't know who we are dominating. I
mean, the Taliban doesn't have an air force, Afghanistan
doesn't have an air force----
Mr. Marshall. If I could, I am going to--let me interrupt.
You are right. They don't. The point is, if we don't have air
dominance, we are in trouble. And it is conceivable that in a
different setting, in a different part of the world, with a
different relationship, we could have a surrogate of one of
these superpowers that is providing air strength, and we don't
have air dominance, in which case we are not going to be able
to go in there or stay there very long.
Mr. Smith. I am sorry. You are going to have to give like a
15-second rebuttal, and then I have got to move on.
Mr. Hartung. I think to the extent that we need that we
should do it at $350 million a plane. I guess that is what I
was saying.
Mr. Smith. Okay.
Mr. Thornberry.
Mr. Thornberry. Mr. Dreifus, let me go back to where I
think we left off--you all have to be a little flexible as we
walk back and forth. As I understand it, it would be nice to
have a strategy that would inform our acquisition and so forth,
and I think you are last comment was, it requires a cultural
change in order to achieve that.
We hear that a lot, by the way, in not just the Department
of Defense, but in other departments and agencies too. The
first question is, okay, what do we put on our to-do list to
create a cultural change?
Secondly, this subcommittee had a hearing a couple weeks
ago where it was suggested that a good--talking back about
putting strategy first--a good model goes back to the--we ought
to consider back to the Eisenhower days where his National
Security Council (NSC) had a small number of people who did try
to provide a strategic guideline at that overarching level, and
then a separate group was focused on implementing.
Can that help, not just with culturally, but provide that
strategic framework that other things operate? Or do you have
other suggestions?
Mr. Dreifus. Thank you, sir. Let me answer the second
question first, and that my help set the change in culture.
First, it is a function of leadership. And if you look at
some famous examples, Harvard case studies and so forth, of
businesses that had to shift the way they did business, their
whole fundamental model, either because their markets were
ending or their business was in trouble, they had to change the
way the did it.
And they did it through leadership, and the leadership had
to understand the value of corporate culture or organization,
and using that as a tool to how to innovate that workforce. But
that leadership has to have a strategy first.
What President Eisenhower did in trying to grasp what the
new threats were facing the country in the 1950s was to get
that small group of people in the Solarium at the White House
and put them to work and look at courses of action. I would
argue that in this age that moves a lot faster than we do in
the 1950s, that is something that needs to be a little bit more
continuous and not something we do every 60 or 70 years.
And so, reconvening a Solarium, or another name for a
similar effort, with the leadership, but doing it now and doing
it in a sustained way--again, keeping it small and keeping it
focused on, what are the battles to come and where do we want
to end up--will then drive the shift in the way in which we are
going to engage. And some of the points that are made here
about the types of wars we are going to fight, the types of
tools we are going to use to fight those wars--where we are
losing on the high ground, I think it is especially important,
such as in the cyberspace, where we are not addressing with
nearly the same level of veracity of investment, that is where
the enemies will come. They will never attack us at our
strengths; they will always exploit our weaknesses, just as we
exploit theirs.
So the first thing I would suggest is to empanel a
Solarium-style effort. And I think that encompasses both the
legislative and the executive branch in bringing the best minds
to the table from wherever they come from. And then from there,
that then becomes your beginning part of a new discussion about
how you change the culture.
And the culture comes down to the people that you put into
those positions. The selection of the types of candidates that
go into those offices and the job description and the
objectives that you assign them, either by legislation or that
comes out of the Solarium II, or whatever strategy effort or a
combination of both.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Ellsworth.
Mr. Ellsworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I think my question will be for Mr. Robb. Mr. Robb, kind of
following up on what we have been talking about, about the new
kind of war with the State Department employees and the
soldiers both--I was in a hearing, I am not sure if it was this
subcommittee or another, that I was a little bit taken aback by
some comments about the Iraqi people wanted more say in regard
to the provincial reconstruction teams and wanted more input
into what we were doing to help them out.
I guess, like I said, I was taken aback that--are we over
there building things that they don't want, don't need, just
for the sake of building those?
And I don't know if we have discussed that today yet, but
like I said, it sure seems like that is something we would do
is ask them--first things I think of are food, water, medicine,
and shelter, and after that it is--we talk about prisons
without other legs on the stool, when we don't have a court
system or judges, and I guess--what are we--are we just over
there deciding what we want to build? And maybe that is your
area of expertise, and if you could explore that a little bit.
Mr. Robb. Well, I have seen it, and I have analyzed it, and
frankly, you know, going in at the high level typically doesn't
work. Building high-level infrastructure has a horrible,
horrible track record across the board. And if the projects
don't, you know, fall apart naturally through mismanagement,
all the money is whisked away in corruption.
I saw that recently with decorations of Senator Clinton in
regards to the reconstruction of Afghanistan and the $7 billion
we spent there. And then also, these high-level teams typically
end up being the target of attacks, like Contract International
was a classic example back in 2005, where 60 percent of the
budget went to security because they were being attacked on an
ongoing basis.
The way around that, and whether you are looking at
counterinsurgency operations where you subdivide the country
into inkblots, or you are doing stability operations, or you
are doing development, is that the macro-level in a nation
state typically doesn't work, and that its service delivery and
its political goods delivery is very, very weak. The best way
to fix the problem and get control of it is to start at the
local and going towards the resilient community and getting
organic growth of communities that can actually get things done
across the board. And getting those technologies together and
getting those methodologies together, being able to do that,
you can go in and create centers of organic order.
And you combine that in most of our instances where we are
actually winning conflicts on the ground in unstable areas--
winning, quotation marks--is that we are not actually defeating
those forces in military means or even through development, we
are cutting deals with militias, which are another centers of
organic order. And our ability to manage those militias, manage
those groups on the ground is pretty weak.
I mean, I suggested in the paper that we look at maybe
taking a customer relation management system from the private
sector, you know, the same sales management system that people
use at IBM or whatever, just to maintain contact, you know--
what did you say to this, you know, this tribal chieftain or
this person, you know, who is rising in the ranks in this or
that militia so we have some kind of institutional memory, and,
you know, take salesforce.com and six-month convert it, it is
really short dollars.
But we are maintaining this kind of management of, you
know, 500, 600 militias inside of Iraq, and we are going to do
the same thing in Afghanistan, and we are hoping to do the same
thing in, say, in Pakistan, with the Frontier Corps and
judicial militias. Talk about anti-Somali piracy, it is
probably going to be coming down to, you know, hiring our own
local militias to--not probably through U.S. dollars--Saudi
dollars, Chinese dollars to go in and take the pirates up.
But that is how you end up winning, and it is that
management of the local. Does that help?
Mr. Ellsworth. I think sometimes it seems like we build--
like the Hogan's Alley down the road at the FBI Academy, we are
over there doing this, it looks nice, and it is the shell, but
there is nothing really behind the walls. And that is a huge
waste of our money. And I am sure the Iraqi people--and in the
future, Afghanistan or Pakistanis--would resent us for that
kind of interference and/or a that kind of help.
Mr. Robb. Well, they also resent the guy who is in the
Capitol. You know, they are supposed brethren and the like. So
if you can bypass the big companies that want a big contract to
do the big project in--you know, the U.S. companies, outlet
companies that want to do those--and go straight to the local
with that package of technology and methodology and practice.
I mean, you know, you can grow food faster and better, you
can produce cleaner water, and on the cheap now--a lot of great
innovation. The technology to do things in a super-powered way
is amazing, even in the developing situations. But there is
really not much other infrastructure.
Mr. Ellsworth. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Conaway? Okay.
Does anybody else have anything to follow up on?
I guess I have one question, applying specifically to a lot
of the stuff you are talking about, to what we are doing in
Afghanistan. And, you know, any of you who want to comment on
sort of, you know, here is a smart approach, here is the not-
so-smart approach, here is how we can sort of restructure our
military, restructure our approach there--how is Afghanistan an
example of whether we are or are not learning some of the
lessons that you all are talking about here?
Anybody want to take a stab at that?
Mr. Hartung. Well, I think it is way too early to tell. I
mean, the fact that it has been going on longer than the Iraq
War indicates that we have a lot of learning to do. And I am
glad to hear the president maybe lowering the bar a little bit
about what our objectives are. I am glad we are not viewing it
as a, you know, primarily mission, that there is going to be
other resources.
But I think, as has been raised by some of the other
members, it isn't really clear that we have a detailed strategy
of how that is going to work. We don't even have a, you know, a
good structure within the government of how to decide which
threats are most important. Is it traditional military threats?
Is it terrorists getting hold of a nuclear weapon? Is it HIV/
AIDS? Is it climate change?
And to some degree, the military has taken on looking at
all of those things because there is not an alternative
structure across the government to look at them. So I think
Afghanistan is still kind of a work in progress, and because,
as was mentioned, we are already deep into it, I think it is
going to be challenging to kind of change strategy and approach
in the midst of the conflict.
Mr. Smith. Anybody else----
Mr. Robb.
Mr. Robb. Yes. Personally, I would like us to leave. I
don't think it is a winnable situation. You can take out
terrorist camps from afar, you know, through Special Ops. You
can work and buy local militias.
A problem even in Iraq now, because our attention is off
the ball, is that our agreement with the militias where we
bought them, which is a fundamental break with
counterinsurgency doctrine, because that says that everything
you do in the country is towards enhancing the legitimacy of
the host state--by cutting deals with people that aren't loyal
to the host state, we broke with doctrine. So if we don't--part
of that deal with those folks in Iraq, the Sons of Iraq, Anbar
Awakening, whatever you want to call it, was that we would
protect them from the Shia who were winning the civil war 2
years ago, which drove them to the bargaining table with us,
and we would arm them.
And we are still arming them, but the pay isn't coming, and
now that we are withdrawing from areas, they are vulnerable
again to attack. So we could be back into the soup again with
that, you know, in another couple months; it could go really
quick. I mean, those guys were guerillas just before we cut
those deals.
Mr. Dreifus. I agree that we are--it is too early to tell
in Afghanistan. However, I think that Einstein defined insanity
as trying to do things the same and hoping for a different
result when you repeat it, and what we may want to look at is
using this as a strategic opportunity to think about how we
engage this new type of fight with a new type of answer.
And part of that goes to perhaps looking beyond the
traditional, just asking the question of defense in the Defense
Committee, but perhaps bringing more people to the table, and
perhaps even forcing the issue of looking at it in a holistic
way and asking other agencies to all get together in a unified
way, explain to the Congress and likewise to their own
strategic approach how they would go about solving the problem
together.
I see the point about maybe it is the Peace Corps training
with the 101st Airborne as one extreme example, but it is
bringing all the parts of the government together in order to
solve a complex challenge.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr. Alexander. I agree with what Mr. Dreifus says.
I would like to make a point about Afghanistan: If I
understand what Mr. Obama said just the other day, that he is
going after the Taliban and he is going after al Qa'ida,
wherever they happen to be, that strikes me as being an
imminently sensible way of looking at the problem. Now, I know
that there is some mission-building involved in this, and many
people have been commenting on that, but if we are thinking as
our main goal to get rid of the danger, wherever it happens to
be, I think we will be a lot clearer thinking in terms of our
solutions.
I understand the idea, and I agree entirely with the idea
of putting the 101st Airborne with the State Department; it
would be a great solution. But that is a decision we have to
make as a nation.
The problem we face at the moment is how to take care of
these great challenges that we have in a military point of
view, and I think that Mr. Obama's approach, if I understand it
correctly, is exactly the correct way to do it. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
I think the challenge is--and I will close with this, and
then if any other members have anything else--is that while I
agree with both Mr. Robb and Mr. Alexander's sentiment that,
you know, the idea--disrupt the networks that threaten us. That
is what we want to do. That is simple, that is straightforward,
and I think that is what the president articulated was the
threat from this region is al Qa'ida and the Taliban that
support them because they are developing, planning attacks
against the West, and we want to disrupt them. And I get that.
The problem is, and I think where we go down the slippery
slope of some of these more difficult issues that we have
explored is, okay, if you pull back and just do that and the
Taliban take over southern Afghanistan, and Karzai is a
nightmare, he doesn't have the support, so they are back in
charge of Afghanistan shortly thereafter.
And then if you want to spin the nightmare scenario out
even further, you know, given, you know, the dysfunctional
nature of the Pakistani government at the moment, it is not
hard to believe that, you know, a Taliban-like group takes over
there.
And while we are pulled out letting this happen, all of a
sudden the job of disrupting those terrorist networks becomes a
hell of a lot more difficult because they have real live state
sponsors, and that opens up a whole new batch of problems. And
that is why it is not quite as simple as just pulling back from
the other responsibilities.
But I thank you very much for coming and testifying. I am
glad that we have managed to avoid being interrupted by votes
but the one time, and really appreciate your testimony.
Before I close it officially, Mr. Miller--I want to thank
Mr. Miller, also. I was neglectful; I didn't do that.
Thank you for opening the committee in my absence. I
apologize for that.
And thank you very much, and we will certainly stay in
touch with all of you as we work these problems. And we are
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
March 11, 2009
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
March 11, 2009
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