Highlights from Gates' recent series of speeches to military colleges, giving you a sense of the themes he's pushing. I am, by and large, in strong agreement with all of them.
MARITIME (Navy War College)
We must examine our blue-water fleet and the overall strategy behind the kinds of ships we are buying. The need to show presence and project power from a piece of sovereign territory called a United States Navy ship will never go away. But we cannot allow more ships to go the way of the DDG-1000 - where since its inception the projected buy has dwindled from 32 to three as costs per ship have more than doubled...
As much as the U.S. Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, in terms of tonnage, its battle fleet, by one estimate, is still larger than the next 13 navies combined - and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners. In terms of capabilities, the over-match is even greater. No country in the rest of the world has anything close to the reach and firepower to match a carrier strike group. And the United States has and will maintain eleven until at least 2040...
Potential adversaries are well-aware of this fact, which is why, despite significant naval modernization programs underway in some countries, no one intends to bankrupt themselves by challenging the U.S. to a shipbuilding competition akin to the Dreadnought arms race prior to World War I. Instead, we've seen their investments in weapons geared to neutralize our advantages - to deny the U.S. military freedom of movement and action while potentially threatening our primary means of projecting power: our bases, sea and air assets, and the networks that support them.
This is a particular concern with aircraft carriers and other large, multi-billion dollar blue-water surface combatants - where the loss of even one ship would be a national catastrophe. We know other nations are working on ways to thwart the reach and striking power of the U.S. battle fleet - whether by producing stealthy submarines in quantity or developing anti-ship missiles with increasing range and accuracy. We ignore these developments at our peril.
The Royal Navy's greatest defeat in World War II - the sinking of the capital ships H.M.S. Repulse and the brand new Prince of Wales by Japanese aircraft just days after Pearl Harbor - was due in part to a command with little appreciation for air power, and in particular the threat posed by a single, air-delivered torpedo.
I have also directed the QDR team to be realistic about the scenarios where direct U.S. military action would be needed - so we can better gauge our requirements. One of those that will be examined closely is the need for a new capability to get large numbers of troops from ship to shore - in other words, the capability provided by the Marine Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. No doubt, it was a real strategic asset during the first Gulf War to have a flotilla of Marines waiting off Kuwait City - forcing Saddam's army to keep one eye on the Saudi border, and one eye on the coast. But we have to take a hard look at where it would be necessary or sensible to launch another major amphibious action again. In the 21st century, how much amphibious capability do we need?
GROUND MODERIZATION (Army War College)
Parts of the Army's Future Combat Systems program have already demonstrated their adaptability and relevance. For example, the connectivity of the Warfighter Information Network will dramatically increase the agility and situational awareness of the Army's combat formations. And we will accelerate its development and field it, along with proven FCS spin-off capabilities, across the entire Army. But the FCS vehicle program was, despite some adjustments, designed using the same basic assumptions as when FCS was first designed nine years ago. The premise behind the design of these vehicles was that lower weight, greater fuel efficiency, and, above all, near-total situational awareness, would compensate for less heavy armor - a premise that I believe was belied by the close-quarters combat, urban warfare, and increasingly lethal forms of ambush that we've seen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and are likely to see elsewhere as other adversaries probe for and find ways to turn our strengths against us.
Though the Army currently holds a comfortable margin of dominance over any other conventional ground force, the service clearly must have a new, modernized fleet of combat vehicles to replace the Cold War inventory. But before we spend ten years and $90 billion, and before we send young soldiers downrange, we had better be sure to get it right - or as close to right as we can.
AIR POWER (Air War College)
When examining the issue of air supremacy, we had to ask, what is the right mix of weapons to deal with the span of threats? What are the things that the F-22, and only the F-22, can do - and where would it be required? There is no doubt that the F-22 has unique capabilities that we need - the penetration and defeat of an advanced enemy air defense and fighter fleet. But, the F-22 is, in effect, a niche, silver-bullet solution required for a limited number of scenarios...In assessing the F-22 requirement, we also considered the advanced stealth and superior air-to-ground capabilities provided by the fifth-generation F-35s now being accelerated in this budget, the growing capability and range of unmanned platforms like the Reaper, and other systems in the Air Force and in other services.
I also considered the fact that Russia is probably 6 years away from Initial Operating Capability of a fifth-generation fighter and the Chinese are 10 to 12 years away. By then we will have more than 1,000 fifth-generation fighters in our inventory. In light of all these factors, and on the recommendation of the Air Force secretary and chief of staff, I concluded that 183 - the program of record since 2005 - plus four would be a sufficient number to meet requirements. To be clear, the F-22 program of record as codified in the FY 2005 budget (and all budgets since) will be completed, and not cut as many have said and reported.
A WAR FOOTING (Army War College)
Starting with the roll-out of the Iraq surge, an overriding priority has been getting troops at the front everything they need to fight, to win, and to survive while making sure that they and their families are properly cared for when they come home. During this period, I frequently heard from troops and commanders about what they needed most to complete their mission. I went to the hospitals and talked to the wounded, and I went to the bases and talked to the families. And I read about shortfalls and other problems in the newspapers. Then I raised some of the same issues at the Pentagon - and heard the building's response about what could be done, and how fast. And whether the issue was Walter Reed, fielding MRAPs, or sending more UAVs and ISR assets to theater, I kept running into the fact that the Department of Defense as an institution - which routinely complained that the rest of the government was not at war - was itself not on a war footing, even as young Americans were fighting and dying every day. For me, everything kept coming back to a simple question, "Is this really the best we can do for our kids?"
THE NEXT WAR (Army & Air War College)
We have to be prepared for the wars we are most likely to fight - not just the wars we've traditionally been best suited to fight, or threats we conjure up from potential adversaries who also have limited resources. And as I've said before, even when considering challenges from nation-states with modern militaries, the answer is not necessarily buying more technologically advanced versions of what we built - on land, sea, or in the air - to stop the Soviets during the Cold War.
RECONCILING PARADIGMS (Army War College)
The challenge is balancing support for the warfighter in an era of persistent conflict - where good-enough solutions are needed in months, weeks, or, better yet, tomorrow - with an entirely different dynamic for conventional and strategic programs - which can take many years to achieve the desired level of technology overmatch. Reconciling these two paradigms is one of the most vexing challenges facing our military institutions - but one I am committed to tackle.
Monday, April 20, 2009 at 3:39AM 
