Military Officer - December 2006 - (Page 73)

al-Qaida, which seeks to acquire such weapons. In the end, the QDR simply fails to provide a sense of how DoD will address this admittedly difﬁcult challenge. T Matching ends with means he defense program recommended by the QDR is not adequately funded. The QDR calls for a large-scale modernization effort in the coming years, the ﬁrst in more than two decades. Yet it also proposes to reduce defense spending toward the end of this decade, in part by holding down spending on personnel, even though recent increases in beneﬁts have failed to stem the decline in the quality of recruits entering the Army. To be sure, some personnel cuts are planned, and a few small programs will be canceled, but the tough choices were deferred, raising doubts as to whether the pre-QDR defense program can be executed, let alone the post-QDR program that includes new initiatives. Independent estimates conclude that over the long term the defense program could be short some $50 billion a year — a gap that will be difﬁcult to erase given the administration’s plans to halve the deﬁcit by 2009. T Investing wisely? he QDR’s proposed defense program is strikingly modest in its efforts to adapt to the new challenges it identiﬁes. The saying “show me your budget priorities, and I’ll show you your strategy” may be somewhat hyperbolic, but it contains a strong element of truth. Given the magnitude of the changes witnessed in the past four years, and with the prospect of more to come, one would expect major corresponding adjustments in our military forces and equipment. Yet despite then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s guidance, the QDR leaves U.S. forces equipped primarily for traditional warfare. Among its top priorities: ■ The Army’s Future Combat System, projected to cost nearly $150 billion, was conceived to exploit information technologies to defeat enemy tank forces at a distance — but none of our existing or prospective enemies are building a new version of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard armored force. ■ The Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer, at roughly $4 billion a copy, is a ﬁrepower platform. Yet the naval challenge from China, if it comes, will be centered on its submarine force, a threat against which the DDG-1000 is irrelevant. ■ The Pentagon’s F-35 ﬁghter program is by far the most expensive program in the defense budget, at more than $250 billion. These ﬁghters are designed to sweep enemy aircraft from the skies and strike targets on the ground. But al-Qaida has no air force, and the most worrisome strike systems being ﬁelded by China, North Korea, and Iran are ballistic missiles, not ﬁghter aircraft. ■ The Marine Corps’ V-22 aircraft, designed to hover like a helicopter and ﬂy like a plane, has become so expensive that it cannot be built in large numbers. Meanwhile, the aging helicopter ﬂeet the V-22 is designed to replace is wearing out at an alarming rate, owing to the high pace of operations in Iraq. The Pentagon’s unwillingness to scale back these programs, or in some cases terminate them, will allow them to generate “program momentum.” As they consume ever more funding, their constituencies in the military, Congress, and the defense industry will grow. Consequently, other QDR initiatives that might enable our military to meet new threats risk being starved of funding in their infancy. Among the most promising are: ■ a one-third increase in the number of SOF battalions, America’s most heavily deployed units in the war against radical Islamists; ■ a new long-range strike aircraft designed to loiter for protracted periods over the battleﬁeld, whether searching for terrorist targets in remote areas or missile launchers deep inside Iran or China; ■ programs and forces to cope with detecting, tracking, and disabling WMD, particularly nuclear weapons that enemies might attempt to smuggle into the U.S.; ■ medical countermeasures against bioterrorism threats (here the Pentagon is adding $1.5 billion over ﬁve years — less than half the cost of a single DDG-1000 destroyer); ■ modernizing our air tanker refueling ﬂeet to replace aging aircraft that date back to the 1950s. These aircraft have been in great demand since the Cold War’s end. Their ability to refuel reconnaissance and strike aircraft in ﬂight helps in the effort to maintain something approximating an “unblinking” eye over the battleﬁeld to search and engage high-value targets such as terrorist leaders, “loose nukes,” or mobile missile launchers armed with WMD; and ■ increasing our submarine production to send a clear signal to China as well as our allies that Beijing cannot expect to threaten U.S. freedom of action in an area of vital interest or coerce America’s friends and allies in East Asia. Which set of capabilities best reﬂects the QDR’s assessment of the principal challenges before us? Which WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU What is your take on Krepinevich’s analysis? Share your thoughts by going to www.moaa .org/discussion and scrolling down to the Quadrennial Defense Review, Part 2 link. DECEMBER 2006 MILITARY OFFICER 73 http://www.moaa.org/discussion http://www.moaa.org/discussion

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - December 2006

From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: How to Fund the Future Martial Lore Good Night, Sleep Tight Mixed Review Information Exchange Advertising Index Member Books MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps MOAA Member Services

Military Officer - December 2006

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.