Document created: 9 January 04
Air University Review, March-April 1972

On the Balance of Forces 
and Materiel Support

Of Horses and Horseshoe Nails

Lieutenant Colonel Edward Stellini 

A little neglect may breed great mischief; for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost, and for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by an enemy, all for want of a little care about a horse-shoe nail.

Benjamin Franklin

One day last April, while I was sitting in my study filling out my income tax return, my five-year-old walked into the room, obviously bored and looking for something to do. After scanning the bookshelves and assorted curiosities, he zeroed in on a hand-carved fighter model that serves as a reminder of the good old days when flying was my game.

I could have predicted his next remark: “Dad, can I play with your plane?” I explained to the little guy that the model cost lots of money and is only for “looking at.”

After some brow-furrowing thought, he asked, “Who buys the real airplanes?” I looked at the partially completed Form 1040 on my desk and decided he would never understand that explanation, so I told him that all the daddies chipped in to buy them.

Then he asked what those long, round things were under the wings. I told him that they were the bombs that the airplane drops on the bad guys. I expected him next to ask who the bad guys were, but instead he asked, “Who buys the bombs—the mommies?” 

I told him that some of the money that the daddies chipped in was used to buy the bombs. I thought the next question was quite perceptive, coming from a five-year-old: “How do the daddies know how many airplanes and how many bombs to buy?”

I explained that we counted how many airplanes we could buy with the money collected and that, instead of buying just airplanes, we spent enough money to buy enough bombs so each airplane would have its share.  

This “clear and simple” explanation obviously satisfied him because he said, “Oh!” Then, “I think I’ll go and play now, Dad.” 

Before getting back to the tax return, I wondered if he really understood. Even if the method we use to balance forces and the materiel support for those forces was straightforward to a five-year-old, it certainly is not to the analysts, planners, and decision-makers in the services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).

In 1970 the Secretary of Defense asked the Secretary of the Air Force a question much the same as the one my son asked me. He wanted to know how the Air Force planned to balance the forces and the materiel support. Part of the chain reaction to that question involves work now being conducted by the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Studies and Analysis. The purpose of the work is to develop an improved method for determining the proper mix of ordnance to stockpile in Europe, Asia, and the continental United States for use if deterrence fails and we must fight a conventional war. A primary criterion is that all the air-to-ground sorties we would expect to fly in such a war must be adequately loaded with ordnance, external fuel tanks, and electronic countermeasure (ECM) pods. After arriving at the ordnance stockpiles, we must develop a procurement plan by which the dollars to be spent for forces and war readiness materiel are in the “proper balance” for whatever budget level is established for tactical air forces.

In this article I shall discuss the complex problem of balancing forces and materiel support. First, I shall put the problem in historical perspective; then put the microscope on one corner of the problem, to show how the solution is sensitive to assumptions made at various levels of analysis; and, finally, discuss the pros and cons of two alternative approaches to working the specific part of the problem being analyzed.

No attempt will be made to pass judgment on which approach is best. I shall only try to furnish some illumination on the complexity of problems dealing with a major force issue: balancing forces and materiel support.

Historical Perspective

In a series of lectures presented in 1965, Charles J. Hitch, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), did three things: (i) traced the evolution of the “defense problem” over the course of U.S. history under the Constitution; (ii) described the purpose and function of the “programming” system installed in the Department of Defense (DOD) in 1961; and (iii) discussed the application of operations research and systems analysis to the problem of defense decision-making with regard to the choice of weapon systems and the allocation of resources among alternative forces and programs. In these lectures he noted that it was not until 1961 that the full powers of the Secretary of Defense to run the Department on a unified basis were actually used. Although unification had occurred almost eighteen years earlier, according to Mr. Hitch the only significant unification that existed in 1961 was in three areas:

1. Unified commands had been created in all overseas theaters and for continental defense. . . .

2. Joint contingency plans for the use of existing forces had been prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for many contingencies. . . .

3. Finally, the civilian Secretaries had taken control of the over-all level of the defense budget and brought it into line with the fiscal policy of the administration. The primary method of so bringing the defense budget into line, used by all the Secretaries before the present incumbent, was to divide a total defense budget ceiling among the three military departments, leaving to each department, by and large, the allocation of its ceiling among its own functions, units, and activities. The Defense Secretaries used this method because they lacked the management techniques needed to do it any other way.¹

The President would indicate the general level of defense expenditures that he felt was appropriate to the international situation and his overall economic and fiscal policies, and the Secretary of Defense would do his best to allocate the dollar amount to the services. The services would then allocate their share of the budget among their respective functions, units, and activities. Additional requirements that could not be accommodated within the ceiling would be included in an “addendum” budget. The combined service budgets were then reviewed by the Secretary of Defense in an attempt to achieve balance.²

a new approach to defense decision-making

During the final years of the Eisenhower administration, a number of economists and defense analysts associated with the RAND Corporation began to take a hard look at how decisions on strategy, technology, and economy were being made in the Department of Defense. This research resulted in the classic volume, The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age, which included an intensive examination of the question, “How much should we spend for defense?” It also provided the basis for a new approach to making decisions on defense spending, which is now being used throughout DOD: The Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS). Also included in this book is a lengthy dissertation on the mathematics of maximization by Dr. Alain Enthoven.

In January 1961, John F. Kennedy began his term as the new Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Within the next few weeks he announced the new military strategy of “flexible response,” patterned after the theory expounded by General Maxwell Taylor in The Uncertain Trumpet, and appointed Robert S. McNamara as Secretary of Defense. McNamara then appointed Mr. Hitch as his comptroller and Dr. Enthoven as Hitch’s assistant for systems analysis; later the Systems Analysis Office was given greater importance, and Enthoven became an Assistant Secretary of Defense.

a return to the budget-limit approach

In January 1969, eight years after the Kennedy-McNamara era began, Richard Nixon became the new Commander in Chief. Since taking office President Nixon has strengthened the policy-formulation procedure by revitalizing the National Security Council (NSC). This has led to a number of formal studies called National Security Study Memoranda (NSSM), which have provided a clearer delineation of strategies and alternatives than existed before. The net effect has been a better basis for policy guidance.

Over the next several months Dr. Enthoven and most of the other key people in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis (OASD/SA) resigned their positions—perhaps for political reasons, but probably, to a large extent, because of the lesser part to be played by this office under the new Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird. This lesser role came about as a result of strong pressure from certain elements in Congress. In 1968 and 1969 the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Mendel L. Rivers, had called for the complete abolition of the Systems Analysis office, but the Senate Armed Services Committee did not go along with this proposal. As a compromise, the new Systems Analysis office is now charged only with “evaluation and review” of forces designed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and the services and will “not put forward proposals of its own.”³

After leaving OASD/SA, Dr. Enthoven and one of his former assistants, Dr. K. Wayne Smith, published a documentary aptly entitled How Much Is Enough? The book begins with a chapter on what was wrong with the Defense Department when Dr. Enthoven arrived on the scene and ends with a chapter on what the authors feel is wrong with the way it appears things are going under the new administration. For example, they feel that, because of the new passive role to be taken by OASD/SA, “the ability to recruit and retain first-rate talent will inevitably suffer, and an important force for the national interest in defense programs will be lost.”⁴ In general, the book is well written and must reading for any serious student of defense decision-making. However, one should also read the other side of the story to get a balanced picture. (An excellent critique of the book may be found in a recent issue of the Armed Forces Journal.)⁵

In the final chapter Enthoven and Smith express their views on the return to a budget-limit approach to defense decision-making. They are concerned that the services will be allowed to determine how they will apportion their fractional share of the defense budget and how OSD will make its review:

While we hope that the OSD review will be effective—and reflect substantial participation by the Secretary of Defense and his staff—at this writing it is not clear that it will be. The theory seems to be, “We’ll give the Services broad guidance and review their implementations.” It will be interesting to see how many “prestige items” replace needed but unglamorous military capabilities in the Service budgets.⁶

They go on to say that “the initiative for shaping the strategy and the forces is no longer in the hands of the Secretary of Defense and his staff.”⁷ In summarizing their case they say that most major defense program issues transcend individual service programs:

. . . decisions on the number and kind of tactical air forces that the Air Force should deploy depend on comparable decisions with respect to the Navy and Marine Corps tactical air forces. More importantly, they depend on national policy with respect to the number and kind of limited war contingencies that the United States should be prepared to meet and the speed or readiness which one should be able to meet them with.⁸

The authors state that the JCS is supposed to integrate interdependent service parts of the problem but that the JCS, being a committee, does not act that way. Instead it “staples together Service requests” or, if forced to make hard choices, tries to “negotiate a compromise.” The Secretary of Defense, they say, should insure that there is no unnecessary duplication in glamour areas and underfunding in other areas.

In closing, the authors make this warning: 

More Presidential guidance on strategy and budgets earlier in the annual planning cycle and more Service responsibility for making the hard choices can be valuable additions to the Defense Department’s management system. But they must be additions to the system; they cannot be substitutes. For if the pattern of carving up the budget by Service fractions and turning the pieces over to the Services to spend as they see fit were to persist, within a few years, as the logic of the overall shape of the defense program erodes, as the readiness of the general purpose force deteriorates, . . . one can be sure that the expressions of legitimate dissatisfaction will increase.

It happened in the 1950’s. The lessons learned then and applied in the 1960’s should not have to be relearned in the 1970’s.¹⁰

participatory management and the new PPBS

During the past two years the new administration has been making an intensive review of our national security policy. From this review, new concepts, including the Nixon Doctrine and the policy of realistic deterrence, have emerged. The strategy of realistic deterrence emphasizes the need to plan for the optimum use of all military and related resources available to meet the requirements of Free World security. To achieve these goals, a number of changes have been made both in the overall philosophy of decision-making on defense matters and in the management tools established to carry out the decisions.

In the early days of the previous administration, Secretary McNamara had introduced the PPBS decision-making process, which relied heavily on analytical input, option analysis, and trade-off analysis (with the analysis inputs originating, for the most part, at the OSD level—OASD/SA “proposed” and the services “opposed”).

Under Secretary Laird, the old PPBS has been retained; but now it is the services that are proposing, while OASD/SA—acting in an advisory capacity to the Secretary of Defense—is working with the services to insure that the hard choices on program decisions are being made within the fiscal constraints established. This decentralization in the decision-making process is called “participatory management.”

As a tool for making these program decisions, a systematic approach called “economic analysis” has been established by the OSD Comptroller. Economic analysis involves the following sequence of tasks:

• Deciding on the objective, and then searching out all alternatives for achieving that objective.

• Determining, and explicitly stating, comparable costs and benefits for each alternative. Costs and benefits should include the intangibles as well as the tangibles.

• Comparing the alternative costs and benefits so as to identify the most efficient, or effective, alternative in terms of achieving the objective.¹¹

The PPBS established during the Hitch-Enthoven years has undergone a number of changes under the new administration. This management technique, which is a system for establishing, maintaining, and revising the Five Year Defense Program (FYDP) and the DOD budget, requires that Program Objective Memoranda (POM) be submitted in prescribed format by the Secretaries of the services. In the POM’s the Secretaries recommend the total resource requirements within the parameters of the published Secretary of Defense fiscal guidance for their service. They are also required to show the rationale used in arriving at their planned expenditure levels for the 5-year period of the next FYDP update. This rationale must show how the balance in forces and materiel support was achieved.

planning guidance

In guidance for the FY 73-77 Defense Program, the specific objectives of deterrence are spelled out. For example, for strategic nuclear forces, “sufficiency criteria” are discussed. For theater conventional forces, the objective is to maintain those ground, air, and naval forces which, in conjunction with those of our allies, will deter a theater war through a capability to cope with major conventional conflict involving the potential enemies if specific forms of aggression occur.

The guidance specifies the budget-dollar targets (fiscal guidance categories) for each service and defense agency and, within these organizations, the targets for major mission forces (strategic, land, tactical air, naval, and mobility); other missions (intelligence and security, communications, R&D, and support to other nations); general support; and miscellaneous costs. Except for those fiscal categories and subcategories for which the dollar amounts are not to be adjusted, each service has the option of making dollar adjustments within its portion of the budget pie.

Guidance is also given for planning the materiel support for the forces within fiscal constraints. Tactical air munitions currently available and in development offer major improvements in effectiveness. This improved effectiveness offers the potential to increase significantly the productivity (target kill capability) of those tactical air sorties which we would allocate to the air-to-ground role. Within any total tactical air funding level, force effectiveness can be changed by varying the allocation of resources between sortie capability and the quantity and quality of the air munitions procured for the stockpile.

The services (Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force) must ensure that there is a “balance” between programmed tactical air forces and air munitions war reserve procurement; this balance should be chosen so as to yield the maximum target kill capability for the tactical air force dollars, plus some reasonable allocation of general support costs to tactical air forces, which each service plans to spend.

Now that I have described the framework in which the business is conducted, let us take up the concern expressed by Dr. Enthoven in the final chapter of How Much Is Enough? i.e., Will the services, left to their own devices, really elect to allocate their respective shares of defense dollars properly between “horse, and horseshoe nails”? I shall consider this issue as it relates to the balance of tactical fighter forces and the air munitions stockpile to be procured to support these forces. This stockpile of weapons, called war readiness materiel (WRM), represents about 90 percent of dollar expenditures in the materiel support category. I shall state the problem as I envision it and discuss two sides of the issue. Since the purpose of this article is only to provide some visibility on a current major force issue, I shall not attempt to prescribe the alternative that represents the most beneficial solution in terms of the overall objective of balancing forces and materiel support.

Analysis of the Problem

There are presently available and in development a variety of air-to-ground weapons that have a wide range of target kill capability. The unit costs of these weapons range from about $200 (general purpose bombs) to nearly 100 times that amount (guided weapons). Some of these weapons have wide applicability to target types, while others are optimized for specific target types (e.g., hard-point, mobile targets).

Development of the best mix of munitions to stockpile as WRM is accomplished in two steps:

    Step 1. Select the preferred weapon for each target type, using the cost-effectiveness criterion: least dollars per target kill. Our model for doing this is as follows:

                Minimize C_ti=S_i(C₈+C_i) 
where                      C_ti=total cost to kill the 

                               target using weapon type i (i is a variable 

                               for all weapons that have a kill capability 

                               against the target; these are called candidate weapons.)
                              S_i=sorties, loaded with weapon type i, required to 

                              achieve the specified damage level against

                               the target, i.e., to kill the target
                              C₈=cost of a combat sortie
                              C_i=cost of a sortie load of weapon type i.

    Note: The candidate weapon that produces the lowest C_t for a given target is the preferred weapon for that target.

    Step 2. Allocate sortie loads of these preferred weapons to the various target types where expected to exist in the conflict theater so that all potentially available air-to-ground sorties are used up in some specified conflict duration (which is established for in-theater stockpile planning purposes).

The first step requires that we suboptimize by selecting a preferred weapon for killing each target type at the lowest total cost which equals the sorties required to kill the target times the combined cost of the combat sortie and the ordnance carried on that sortie. In the second step, we optimize the allocation of air-to-ground sorties available to achieve maximum target kill potential in the theater.

It is in the first step that our assumptions about balancing forces (sortie capability) and materiel support (ordnance stockpile) bear on the problem. Specifically, the problem is one of choice in assumptions to be made in computing the cost of a combat sortie (C₈). We can make two alternative assumptions about the cost of a sortie: Case A and Case B.

    Case A. Here we make the assumption that the cost includes the cost of operating and maintaining the aircraft before, during, and after the combat mission plus the fractional cost of replacing the aircraft due to expected attrition.

    Case B. In this case we make the assumption that the cost includes the cost of procuring, operating, and maintaining one aircraft during the prewar (peacetime) period, amortized over the number of sorties expected to be flown by that aircraft during a war of given length.

The difference in sortie cost using these two assumptions is significantly large. In Case A, the sortie cost would be bracketed by the cost of the ordnance carried on the sortie (lower when carrying high-cost, high-effectiveness weapons and higher when carrying bombs). In Case B, the sortie cost would be from about 2 to 50 times as great as the ordnance cost.

To make the distinction clearer, let us use realistic numbers to show the magnitude of costs and the assumptions for each case.

                   Case A: Combat sortie cost
                   C₈ =C_m+ (C_r X A)
where         C_m =combat sortie operations and maintenance (O&M) cost
                  C_r =aircraft replacement cost
                 A =combat sortie attrition rate (includes an expected terminal attrition rate for 

                       the candidate weapon type against the target type plus an enroute attrition rate).

Let the value of C_m=$3000. If we use an attrition rate of 10 losses per 1000 sorties flown (.010) and a replacement aircraft whose procurement cost is $3 million, the per combat sortie cost is $33,000. We use aircraft replacement cost in selecting preferred weapons because we want to finish the war with as large a residual force as possible. The underlying rationale is that the major portion of the cost of using a specific weapon type against a target is reflected by that fraction of the force which we might be expected to lose using one weapon type as opposed to using another.

In this case, we spread total system cost (procurement and peacetime O&M costs) over all sorties, peacetime and combat. Implicitly, this allocates most of the tactical air costs to deterrence rather than to combat sortie capability.

            Case B: Combat sortie cost
            C₈=C_p+C_m
                   _____
                              S_c
where   C_p =aircraft procurement costs (excluding aircraft no longer in production)
            C_m=sortie O&M cost (assume prewar time of 5 years)
            S_c=expected number of combat sorties to be flown during the war 

           (based on a given sortie rate, attrition rate, and length of war).

Let the value of C_p=$3 million, and the value of C_m=$6 million. For a short war of about 3 months, about 60 combat sorties can be expected from a tactical fighter. Therefore, the combat sortie cost is $150,000. 

In this case, we allocate all tactical air costs to the potential combat sortie capability, represented by the assigned aircraft on D-day, and input no value to the deterrent effect of maintaining visible tactical air forces. The implication is that deterrence is important but should not be considered as an integral part of the preferred weapon selection process. Deterrence should be taken into account as follows:

• Select an air munitions stockpile that yields the maximum target kill capability per dollar spent for tactical air capability (both forces and weapons).

• At a “higher level of analysis,” arrive at the proper balance between sortie capability and number of “optimum” sortie loads that should be stockpiled for several levels of expenditure.

• Determine which level of expenditure buys the right amount of deterrence. If that level is above the tentative amount established for tactical air, divert funds from other programs that are judged to have less military worth.

In this case, the high-cost, high-effectiveness weapons would be more prevalent, and we assume that this greater kill potential has some deterrent capability.

The use of these two costing methods will often result in the selection of different preferred weapons. In Case A, where the ordnance cost is in the “neighborhood” of the sortie cost, ordnance cost accounts for a significant part of the total cost to kill the target. In Case B, where a relatively high sortie cost is used, the cost of the ordnance carried, regardless of type, is usually far exceeded by the sortie cost in the total cost calculation. Consequently, the high-cost weapons are usually selected as preferred because they generally are also the most effective. These relationships are shown graphically in Figure 1.

The Issue and the Arguments

Now let’s assume that there is some tentative budget level specified in the fiscal guidance within which trades between aircraft and ordnance (WRM) procurement are to be made. The dominant issue to be addressed is whether we should spend future dollars on all the aircraft planned in the current FYDP, the associated O&M for those aircraft, and enough ordnance to load the planned wartime sorties, or whether we should spend a greater portion of those dollars than otherwise on a stockpile of weapons with much greater kill potential, at the expense of some of the planned force.

Case A argues that the number of aircraft planned for procurement in the current FYDP is not a variable which depends on the fractional war-fighting capability that these aircraft contribute. Instead, the cost of procurement and O&M of forces during peacetime goes toward providing a visible deterrent to war and war-fighting capability in case of war. 

The cost of losing an airplane during a war is equal to the cost of replacing that aircraft, since we desire to have a maximum residual force at the end of the war for continued deterrence or for a war-fighting capability in the next war (perhaps in another theater).

Case B argues that, although deterrence is important, we should make trade-offs as though war-fighting capability is the only objective, and after the fact we should let the decision-makers at the highest level decide if the mix of forces and ordnance to be procured would buy us “enough” deterrence. Presumably, if it was decided that the mix did not furnish enough deterrence, we would spend more dollars for both forces and ordnance (maintaining a balance between the two). The question is whether or not we can determine how much deterrence is enough and, if we need more, whether we can, and should, reallocate proposed dollars from defense programs other than tactical air. (The decision-maker is the Secretary of Defense, who would have the authority to make tradeoffs across service budget lines.)

On this basis, Case B proceeds to charge off the entire systems costs of all aircraft to the number of sorties that can be expected to be flown during a war. Although our strategy guidance states that our primary objective is to deter war, none of the systems costs of our forces are charged explicitly to deterrence. This approach tends dramatically to inflate the cost of a combat sortie, particularly when we use this cost to compare and select preferred weapons.

The assumptions outlined above are shown graphically in the accompanying benefit-cost diagrams (Figures 2 and 3). In these figures the assumption is, for comparative purposes  that we have a fixed amount of dollars ($Y) to be spent on tactical air forces.¹²

Case A: pros and cons

Figure 2 shows Case A. The costs include $X for aircraft procurement and O&M, and $M for WRM over some time period prior to D-day. $X is considered fixed, i.e., I assume the Air Force will spend $X for aircraft procurement and O&M over the prewar time period and that we will spend whatever is necessary for WRM using aircraft replacement cost and expected attrition as the key factors for computing the combat sortie cost. If $X+$M exceeds $Y, we will either make up the difference from other Air Force programs or buy less-expensive munitions. The benefits include:

• The deterrence that accrues from the mix of forces and ordnance procured. Here one must differentiate between “explicit” (visible) deterrence and “implicit” deterrence. In this case, the deterrence that accrues from “aircraft parked on the ramp” is a much more credible deterrence than that which accrues from the enemy’s knowledge that we plan to stockpile a mix of munitions including large numbers of “improved” weapons.

• The potential target kills achievable during the war (war-fighting capability).

• The mobility and flexibility of tactical air forces (the ability to move swiftly from one target to another and the ability to use a fighter for air-to-ground attack on one sortie and for air-to-air attack on the next). Although these characteristics would apply to a force of any size, it is often argued that mobility and flexibility increase at a faster rate than force size, i.e., the marginal aircraft contributes increasing returns.

Figure 2. Case A: benefit-cost factors considered in computing the cost of a combat sortie

The primary advantage we would derive from using the Case A costing method is that it would result in a larger force than would exist if we used the Case B method for any given expenditure level. This larger force level would provide greater explicit deterrence. The importance of this “show of force” was noted recently in an article in Pravda by Vasily Shestov, a Soviet disarmament specialist. He stated that there would be little chance for agreement in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) unless there were some concessions on the 500 U.S. fighters deployed in Europe. Secretary Laird’s reply indicated that our fighters were part of the NATO force just as Soviet aircraft are part of the Warsaw Pact force and that our fighters should be discussed in the context of balanced and mutual force reduction, not in SALT.¹³

Although a lower USAF tactical fighter force level would not necessarily result in fewer aircraft deployed in Europe, it could mean that fewer fighters could be augmented to Europe after hostilities began, as well as lower peacetime deployment in other areas.

The major fault with the Case A costing method is that its use would result in a stockpile of weapons having somewhat less total kill potential than the stockpile resulting from the Case B method. We would be giving up some measure of effectiveness for some of the intangible benefits we would obtain from forces-in-being.

Making a decision as to the preferred weapon requires sound judgment since aircraft force levels and ordnance stockpiles are not truly interchangeable. Force levels are the result of the interplay of a large number of factors and compromises, including national policies, budget priorities, and changing mission emphasis. An aircraft force is built up over a long period, changes relatively slowly, and represents a large investment. The ordnance program is a comparatively small (though still large) investment. Ordnance programs may influence the aircraft program, but in the final analysis the optimization of the ordnance program is really a process of suboptimization in which the capabilities of the aircraft fleet are optimized. For this reason aircraft and nonnuclear munitions are not really trade-off quantities, and cost effectiveness is not a single measure applicable universally to decisions in the munition programs. On the other hand, the criterion of maximizing force air-to-ground capability (with consideration of the dollar cost), which translates into maximizing targets killed per U.S. aircraft lost (within realistic cost constraints), is in consonance with the suboptimization process inherent in procuring munitions for the fleet. This decision rationale provides some insurance against unexpected contingencies, as the munitions program may be modified on a shorter time scale. The availability of high potential-kill, low U.S. attrition munitions will save losses in aircraft so that force levels are protected during periods of severe demands. This will provide time for the buildup of aircraft production rates.

Case B: pros and cons

Figure 3 shows Case B. The costs include $Y for aircraft procurement, O&M, and WRM over some time period prior to D-day. Initially, Y is considered to be a fixed amount. If, at a higher level of analysis, it is decided that the combination of force level and WRM does not provide adequate deterrence, the value of Y would be increased at the expense of other Air Force or other services’ programs. The benefits over Case A include only the increase in potential targets killed during the war (war-fighting capability).

The primary advantage in using the Case B costing method is that it would result in a stockpile of weapons with greater kill potential than the stockpile resulting from the Case A method. During a war, the commander of a fighter wing would select weapons from his bomb dump on the basis of their capability to kill the assigned target with the fewest losses and/or sorties. He would not be concerned that the most effective weapons are also the most expensive weapons in terms of procurement dollars. Instead, his concern would be to kill the target with the least exposure, i.e., least time within range of enemy AAA and fewest sorties required.

In the Case A method, the cost of ordnance would have a significant effect on which weapon is selected as preferred. In the Case B method, since the cost of the sortie dominates the total cost to kill the target, the ordnance cost would have little effect on weapon selection. Therefore, the weapon requiring the fewest sorties—the weapon with the greatest effectiveness—would normally be selected.

The major disadvantage in using the Case B method concerns the assumptions we must make regarding time. We must assume the period of time from T_o (the present) to D-day to compute the prewar O&M costs of the average fighter. We must also estimate how long the conflict will last to compute how many sorties a fighter can be expected to fly.

In addition to these disadvantages, this method would result in a lower force level than if we used the Case A method for any given level of expenditures because we would spend more on ordnance. From this lower force level we could expect lesser explicit deterrence. If we had perfect knowledge of how much explicit deterrence was necessary to prevent a potential enemy from starting a war, and if we knew how many fighters were required to achieve that deterrence, we would have no force/stockpile trade-off problem. We would simply build a fence around that force level and buy the best ordnance we could afford. In that event the trade-off would be between the ordnance stockpile and resources other than tactical forces. In fact, however, we do not know the force level that will deter our potential enemies or what amount of military worth we accrue by substituting improved munitions for aircraft, in terms of both increased implicit deterrence and increased target kill potential. Therefore, we can only assume that any reduction in our planned force level will result in a lower level of explicit deterrence than exists now.

levels of analysis

What makes the problem of arriving at the proper balance in forces and support a complex one is the necessity of making assumptions which may affect force levels at various levels of analysis.¹⁴

At the task level, we assess the capabilities of various weapons and forces in achieving the same specific task, such as destroying a tank. At this level there is little uncertainty other than that associated with the probability formulas used in estimating the number of weapons required to kill a target.

At the situation level, we assess the conflict situation in terms of a specific military objective. We must take into account joint and/or combined operations and consider interacting factors such as geography, time, enemy actions, attrition, and logistic support. All these increase the degree of uncertainty about coming to the right level and mix of forces and kinds of ordnance we should stockpile. At this level some of the criteria we should use in evaluating force levels are mobility, survivability, responsiveness, and flexibility.

At the highest level, the national policy level, the unquantifiables are assessed. In addition to the deterrent capability of the force under consideration, these criteria also should be considered:

• Versatility. How effective would the force be in a variety of military and politico-military situations and crises?
  
• National acceptability. How readily will the force be accepted domestically, in terms of both the level of Defense spending and the implication that the force will be used to support our foreign policy?
  
• International acceptability. How readily will the force be accepted as credible by our allies and our potential enemies?

At this level of analysis, a high degree of uncertainty exists; and judgments on the size of the force needed must be made in terms of all the national resources available.

But the task of balancing the force and the materiel support is not addressed only at the national policy level. It is first addressed at the lowest level of analysis, i.e., at the task level. As we have seen in the discussion on how to compute the cost of a combat sortie, we must make some basic assumptions that will impact on the force-support balance.

The problem is quite obviously a complex one. It requires some decision-making even at the “nuts and bolts” level. What apparently has concerned Dr. Enthoven is that, because of the new “participatory management” philosophy established by Secretary Laird, the services may opt to hold the line on force levels at the expense of materiel support—putting the emphasis on the horses rather than the horseshoe nails.

Whether this emphasis is good or bad for the United States, I cannot say. At the present time there is no way of quantifying the intangibles, such as the value of mobility and flexibility of a given force, and the amount of forces needed to insure deterrence. Until we can quantify these and other factors in the same way we now quantify war-fighting capability, the solution to the problem of balanced forces and support must necessarily be left to the collective judgment of the service and OSD decision-makers working together in a spirit of cooperation.

Hq United States Air Force

Notes

1. Charles J. Hitch, Decision-Making for Defense (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 17, 18.

2. Ibid., p. 24.

3. Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 334.

4. Ibid.

5. Benjamin Schemmer, “How Much Is Enough? Tells a Lot . . . But Not Enough,” Armed Forces Journal, 1 February 1971, pp. 36-42.

6. Enthoven and Smith, p. 335.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., pp. 335, 336.

10. Ibid., pp. 336, 337.

11. Department of Defense Instruction 7041.3, “Economic Analysis of Proposed Defense Investments,” 26 February 1969.

12. The benefit-cost diagrams in Figures 1 and 2 are illustrative only. They do not take into account time factors such as present value of investments and inflation. For more on the effect of these considerations on force level planning, see Major John D. Johnston, The Impact of Discounting, Inflation and Residual Value on Life Cycle Costs of Weapon System Acquisition (Washington: United States Air Force, Assistant Chief of Staff, Studies & Analysis, May 1970).

13. “Won’t Discuss Bombers At Talks, Laird Says,” Washington Evening Star, February 4, 1971, p. A-5.

14. For a detailed discussion on criteria to he considered at various levels of analysis, see E. S. Quade and W. I. Boucher, eds., Systems Analysis and Policy Planning: Applications in Defense (New York: American Elsevier, 1968), pp. 388-417.

Contributor

Lieutenant Colonel Edward Stellini (M.S., George Washington University; M.S., University of Rochester) is a study director, ACS/Studies and Analysis, Hq USAF. He has been a crew training instructor in reconnaissance, a flight examiner in tactical fighters, and an operations staff officer at Hq USAF and Hq MACV. More recently he has served as an operations analyst at Hq USAF. Colonel Stellini is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, and the Defense Systems Analysis Program.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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