Several quotes in Noah Shachtman’s Popular Mechanics cover story “The Great Weapons Debate” (April 2006 issue)
Monday, March 20, 2006 at 7:09PM I spent the better part of an hour sitting on my apartment balcony talking to Noah back at the start of the year. His story finally appears in this month’s issue of Popular Mechanics. It’s a good story.
I get a good quote in the fourth full-text page (70), then two additional ones on the final jump page (102), to include the closing quote--very cool. Still, gives you a sense of the boil-down, yes?
Among others quoted: John Pike (GlobalSecurity.org), President Bush, Ralph Peters (quoted saying similar things to me), U.S. Navy Captain James Syring (DDX program supervisor; DDX representing the next generation destroyer), Rear Admiral Charles Hamilton (Syring’s boss), Captain Don Babcock (LCS planner; LCS representing planned new Littoral Combat Ship), Bob Rubino (Lockheed Martin), my old buddy retired USMC Maj. Gen. Tom Wilkerson (I wrote of him in PNM), and Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac (acquisitions chief for service).
Here are my segments:
PAGE 70, IN THE SECTION “DOMINATING ALL SEAS”… “We’re thinking the Mogadishu scenario,” Syring says. “The DD(X) is designed to put a ring of fire around that Black Hawk.”
Talk like than might ordinarily encourage Thomas P.M. Barnett, a Pentagon consultant who has become an influential Long War evangelist. But the idea of the DD(X) as a guerrilla fighter makes him fume. Ships a third smaller and 500 times cheaper can drop off SEALs. And those big guns? With a maximum artillery range of 100 miles, the DD(X) couldn’t target an insurgent stronghold in Baghdad. “There are other ways to do this,” Barnett says. “Why not just launch an airplane?”
Barnett sees the destroyer as a Cold War throwback. Today’s enemies defend themselves with speed, not armor. There are no Warsaw Pact-style headquarters to flatten. “So what’s the point,” Barnett asks, “of packing everything into big, concentrated assets--assets that provide a single point of failure--in a world where warfare seems to be going in the exact opposite direction?”
That bit is naturally followed by a Navy guy saying that if we optimize for the GWOT, we’ll be blindsided by a “near-peer competitor”--namely China.
PAGE 102, IN THE SECTION “WINNING THE LAST WAR”Immediately after 9/11, there seemed to be few, if any, consequences for delaying decisions on what kind of military to build. Congress wasn’t about to skimp on defense. But money is getting tight. And tomorrow’s massive weapons programs may be undermining today’s war on terror.
Stopping insurgencies and chasing extremists take manpower; the QDR [Quadrennial Defense Review] acknowledges that, adding 14,000 Special Forces over the next five years. But, at the same time, it reduces the planned size of the Army by 30,000 troops, in part to preserve FCS [Future Combat System; a massive Army modernization program]. The Air Force will let go 40,000 so it can hold on to its new jets. The DD(X), which uses half the sailors of today’s destroyers, is part of a long-term Navy plan to cut its workforce by 12,000.
All of which strikes Barnett, the Pentagon consultant, as odd, when the president and the defense secretary keep talking about reorienting the military to handle the global war on terror. “We’re making this long-range hedge versus the possibility of--what, exactly?” Barnett asks. “Losing Taiwan? Well, justify that against losing 1000 men per year.”
But the American people expect a “full-spectrum” military, Army acquisition chief Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac tells me--one that quickly, decisively wins wars of every kind, everywhere. “Our soldier, he’s got to dominate that urban battle space and this Cold War-style, tank-on-tank fight,” he says. Until a political decision is made that one threat is the absolute top priority, Yakovac will have to keep buying systems for every scenario. Thousands of lives and tens of billions of dollars could go to waste. “We’ve got to reorient to this new world we’re in,” Barnett says. “And we’re doing it--operationally and doctrinally. But when it comes to acquisition--buying big weapons systems--too many people are trying to revive yesterday’s war.”
And the story ends on that quote, which obviously informed the final section.
Reading the piece now, I understand Noah’s original pitch to me that it was logically a continuation of my November Esquire piece, “The Chinese Are Our Friends.” Without realizing it, Noah’s piece also fits quite nicely with my March piece, “The Monks of War.”
So, for me, worth the effort of the interview. Very cool to appear in Popular Mechanics for the first time in my career, and especially cool to get some quotes in such a great piece.
Reader Comments (6)
Good Article: Rare and original information for the masses.
Keep up the good work!
I totally agree with Mr Barnett on this issue.With the fleet falling further below the 300 mark, it is sad that we continue to build ever larger and more expensive legacy platforms. And this is called a destroyer? The LCS is the true destroyer, in size and mission, of the 21st century. This is nothong more than a throwback to the battle cruiser, a vessel with its own dubious history.
I agree that the idea of a Destroyer as a 4GW fighter is kind of absurd, but the destroyer as a piece of the Leviathan, exporting security around the world, has merit to my mind. Personally, I'd rather field a force of Destroyers that can be spread across a region that field a Carrier Battle Group that wastes a lot of resources on protection from non-existant near-peer enemies.
Actually to borrow a concept from the fiction of James Cobb, (yes, taken with a grain of salt for being fiction, but 'Once upon a time' crashing an airliner into a building was a piece of fiction) the idea of a Destroyer working alone or in concert with other ships in smaller, more agile, configurations can be very effective as technology gives them a larger and larger combat effective footprint.
Choosers of the Slain, Sea Strike, Seafighter, and Target Lock are if anything good reads but also may provide some useful, if only imaginative, thinking on the future of the Navy.
The idea of a large destroyer goes right back to WW2.
Modern rocket tech allows you to attack an enemy ship from far more than the DDX range of 100km. And if there is the need for a bomb carpet or similar fire support as described in the Mogadishu example is better delivered by close air support. There is simply no need for such a large ship in the 21. century.
when i was in navy i never felt a destroyer was a large ship
As the world changes, threats to the USA change. I think this is the time for more inter-agency co-operation so there is little or no duplication of weapons systems. Why build a Battleship when one flight of aircraft can do a better, more accurate job? And why send in a flight of aircraft when a well equipped tin can will more effectively do the job? In this current time, we need a force that can take on and defeat a China size army, while being able to take on terrorists abroad as well as in the US. It is a must to let the Generals and Admirals look into the past to decide what will work effectively in the future.