Air University Review, May-June 1983
Captain Forrest E. Waller, Jr.
To people outside the national defense community, the efficacy of technological advancement must seem like an article of faith among those on the inside, and the American military must resemble high priests. In American military circles, it has become commonplace to hear the enthusiastic prediction that technological advances will have thoroughly transformed the armed services by the turn of the century. In the context in which these predictions most often occur, at conferences to explain to laymen where military high technology has already sped, one could hardly predict otherwise. However, in a context sensitive to domestic political forces, one might make this prediction: By the turn of the century, domestic political pressure will have thoroughly reformed the armed services. This prediction, like the former, can be based on events and trends already evident, including the appearance in American politics of a military reform movement committed to substantial change. Military reform criticisms respecting military high technology form the critical core of this movement and are likely to have strong influence on military affairs in the future. Their influence is affecting those affairs now. So, the relevant questions are not whether or when these criticisms will be felt but rather what criticisms will be most effective and how they will influence high technology in the armed forces. This article outlines an answer to these questions by identifying the military reformers, their themes and proposals; by rehearsing and evaluating their case against military high technology; and by describing the influence the military reform movement has had and is likely to have on high technology in the armed services.
Military reform became a serious enterprise approximately five years ago. The architects of the movement were a handful of defense analysts who had become disenchanted with the methods, mind-sets, and programs of the American military establishment. Their criticism was not confined to the uniformed services, but in general they emphasized military programs and policy and the military itself. That they were able to criticize with authority seemed clear. They had extensive experience in defense analysis and practical experience in the military service. In the late l970s, this small group began to produce an assortment of briefings and articles cataloging their criticism. This criticism was timely and, in some circles, well-received. It subsequently attracted the attention of a handful of congressmen in both parties who formed a caucus on military reform. This criticism also attracted the attention of other analysts who had professional sympathy for the reformers’ arguments and the attention of several Washington journalists who digested the criticism for the public. The military reform movement is an amalgam of these three elements: the original analysts, the Congressional Military Reform Caucus, and the sympathizers.
The expression military reform movement is misleading in two respects. First, the expression suggests an organization that does not really exist. The military reform movement is not a political movement in the sense that the antiwar movement was in the 1970s or the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The military reform movement has fewer members, less direction, and certainly less popular appeal than the major political movements of the last 20 years. There is no permanent organization associated with the movement, yet. The Military Reform Caucus has an executive committee, but it has no staff and no budget. Second, military reform movement implies a degree of consensus among reformers that does not exist. Military reform encompasses so much that there has been scant consensus on an agenda. As one member of the Military Reform Caucus has described it, "There are fifty caucus members and fifty different opinions of what the goals should be."1 In March 1982, the Congressional Military Reform Caucus circulated a draft of "Options for Action on the FY83 Defense Budget." "Options" was a document with limited programmatic objectives that can best be described as the least common denominator of the caucus and perhaps of the movement. It was not an exciting consensus document; however, this was not totally the fault of the authors. The fault was partly due to the nature of the reform issues themselves. Military reform issues are complex and remote from most people’s experience. The issues provoke differences among persons whose goals are identical and whose information is the same. When one adds to these differences the effects of political partisanship, it is easy to understand why consensus has proved difficult.
When one considers the military reform movement’s size, organization, and level of agreement, one may question whether this is in reality a movement capable of significant influence in debates concerning military policy. To attribute to the movement significant influence at present clearly concedes military reformers too much; however, it is also possible at present to concede them too little. The members of the military reform movement are, in great part, also members of an educational, economic, and political elite with important privileges in American society. They are a group whose opinions, harmonious or not, regularly find access to OpEd pages, magazines, and official documents. This movement is an elite one, not a movement of aggrieved, dispossessed persons. Consequently, these reformers will exert influence greater than their numbers, organization, or agreement should permit. Military reform criticisms must be taken seriously.
The military reform movement criticizes the national military community for no longer addressing the relevant security interests of the United States. The movement’s criticism embodies three interrelated themes:
• National defense has become too theoretical;
• War is, and preparations for war are, distinct from other enterprises and should receive distinctive treatment; and
• Resource expenditure is a poor method by which to measure our progress in solving national security problems.2
Military reformers insist that national defense has become too theoretical and that practical military experience carries too little weight in force planning, weapons procurement, and tactics. This theoretical inclination is most pronounced, they say, in planning and procurement of forces for intercontinental nuclear conflict. According to reformers, weapons acquisition, deployment, and employment concepts are based on untried theories of deterrence or nuclear war fighting and calculations of relative strength that do not account for the uncertainties in an unprecedented kind of war fought with technology that has never had a realistic operational test.3 Theoretical inclinations influence other areas, too, ranging from the way the armed services size forces to the military high technology they introduce among conventional forces as "force multipliers."
The second theme, related to the first concerning theory, is that military matters are distinct from other enterprises and should be treated as such. One aspect of this theme is the professional judgment that military service is a calling, not just another job. Senior military officers share this judgment, but many junior officers do not. Junior officers are more likely to view military service as an occupation.4 Military reformers accuse the services themselves with having created this occupational attitude by emphasizing skill in management as the preeminent quality of good officership. This emphasis allegedly spreads in the officer corps a management ethic which, at the cutting edge of the military, acknowledges only one war style: attrition.5Attrition, reformers contend, is an invalid war style for the United States because, having opted for expensive high technology, the United States can no longer afford the material superiority attrition warfare requires.6 Reformers believe a war style based on maneuver is far more appropriate to the material circumstances of the United States.
The armed services’ emphasis on management also spreads in the officer corps a managerial logic that confuses efficiency and military effectiveness, they say. This confusion leads to high-technology weapons that are efficient in laboratory tests but ineffective in combat. Managerial logic also leads to efficient fixed force posture and the demand from the services for more efficient high-technology weapons when that force posture does not plausibly meet our military requirements.7
The final theme, resource expenditure as an index of progress in addressing military problems, is more than a condemnation of the most popular standard by which we compare our military effort with that of the Soviet Union. It is an invitation to reconsider the defense effort the nation can afford. The first defense reality of the 1980s, according to reformer James Fallows, is that the American economy cannot easily support substantial increases in defense expenditure. The government sector is already as large as is politically feasible, short of an emergency requiring rationing and forced savings. Those who attempt to readjust the budget allocations within the government sector will be confronted with the difficult problems of reducing entitlement programs and of reducing the purview within which the federal government has operated for nearly two generations. Therefore, defense spending is not likely to account for more than its present budget share, and the economy itself will not support greater defense spending until it recovers from its fundamental problems of low productivity growth and low investment.8 This argument gives rise to another condemnation of high technology. The only reasonable solution to military equipment procurement and an acceptable defense budget under these circumstances, Fallows believes, is to squeeze as much value out of defense spending as is possible by "stopping the progression toward ever more costly and complex weapons." These weapons take a long time to develop and deploy and a long time to pay for. Until we learn to buy austere weaponry, he asserts that weapons costs and complexity will reduce military preparedness and impose an unsupportable economic burden.9 Other reformers agree.
In July 1980, Senator Gary Hart, a military reformer, acknowledged the existence of a consensus on defense in the U.S. Senate, but he wondered whether "the new defense consensus brings with it a certain danger."10 The danger, as he saw it, was concentration on process rather than product.
Spending is only one component to increased military effectiveness. More spending will only provide a better defense if the money is spent on the right things. It is quite possible to spend for defense, and achieve nothing. History suggests it is possible to spend great sums and actually weaken defense. The French spent billions of francs on the Maginot Line, yet all they bought was a false sense of security . . . .11
The Maginot Line contains a policy lesson with powerful charm to military reformers, as it illustrates the point that a high price tag and technological sophistication are not the equivalents of military effectiveness. Even so, they are acutely sensitive to the charge that their real interest extends no further than saving money. Saving money is not the point of their criticism or the term of reference for the debate.
The real debate is between two different definitions of quality. The Pentagon defines quality in technical terms: High technology equals quality. The military reform movement defines quality tactically, in terms of the characteristics that are most important in actual combat. That definition leads the reformers to emphasize such characteristics as: Small size . . . Reliability . . . Rapid effect . . . Numbers…. The same characteristics that give a weapon tactical quality. also tend to make it cheaper. Thus, the practical choice is not between quality and quantity but between technological quality in small numbers and tactical quality in large numbers.12
From these critical themes, military reformers derive proposals for change. Assembled, these proposals reveal that the military reform movement has impressive ambitions not only in respect of military high technology but generally in military affairs. However, one can be misled by collecting these proposals in a single list. The proposals do not constitute a reform program endorsed by the movement or any of its components. On the contrary, there is considerable diversity, and even inconsistency, within the military reform movement concerning what program to propose.
With that caveat in mind, the military reformers offer the following proposals:
• Change the way the armed forces identify, educate, promote, and honor officers.
• Create for officers new professional specialties, career paths, and new organizations to absorb the new specialists.
• Change the way of assigning and reassigning officers and enlisted men to combat units in order to take advantage of the bonding processes that lead to unit cohesion and respect between the commissioned and enlisted ranks.
• Change the cycle of combat and rest that American forces have followed since the beginning of World War II.
• Adopt a new style of warfare emphasizing maneuver, strategic mobility, and equipment with tactical quality.
• Recommend that the United States come to grips with the defense budget by recommending thirty-five ways to save money in the Department of Defense, thirty of which involve cancellation of high technology weapon programs or substitution of modest weapons for advanced ones. 13
• Alter the structure of the Department of Defense to expunge the "high technology culture."
• Replace the Joint Chiefs of Staff with an American general staff system.
• Provide new conventional strategies for NATO and a more realistic force structure for nuclear deterrence.
• Recommend that our allies bear a greater portion of the West’s defense burden; and finally
• Propose a new geopolitical strategy to secure our worldwide interests.
In spite of the military reform movement’s wide-ranging interest in military reform, the thread uniting its themes and dominating its proposals is military high technology. It is necessary, therefore, to be more specific concerning the reform movement’s case against military high technology.
Military high technology is a special target for military reformers’ criticism. They argue that a peculiar preference for sophistication among the Pentagon’s technologists places an unreasonable burden of risk on our combatants and an unreasonable economic burden on the nation.
The extra increment of performance that advanced technology provides costs a disproportionate share of the cost of a new weapon system and a great deal of money, reformers say. This technology, when deployed in one form or another throughout an entire force posture, constitutes a heavy financial burden for the nation. Externalities associated with deficit spending and opportunity costs to other sectors of the economy aggravate the social burden of this technology.14 The burden might be reasonable, reformers imply, if it offered a plausible hope for success on the battlefield. Unfortunately, high technology promises no such success.
On the contrary, military reformers believe that the complexity of military high technology produces insidious effects. First, it increases the vulnerability of our forces. The technologists’ infatuation with "gold-plating" combat vehicles with the latest technology has the pernicious effect of increasing their size and weight while reducing their agility. Moreover, high technology is sometimes inconsistent with good human factors and requires our soldiers to expose themselves to danger unreasonably. Second, high technology reduces our readiness. Sophisticated American equipment is so expensive that our combat units cannot train as much as they need. American weapons are too expensive to shoot, too fragile to use regularly at levels of peak performance, or too complex to maintain. And most important, the expense of high technology weaponry causes American forces to be outnumbered. Military high technology is so expensive that the armed services are unable to buy all the weapons they need. The adverse numerical ratios between ourselves and our opponents stimulate the services to call for means to multiply the effect of their less numerous forces. In practice, this means that the services seek more high technology which exacerbates their numerical problem rather than relieving it.15 These factors combine, in the opinion of some reformers, to create an unreasonable burden of risk for our soldiers. Reformers conclude that the military is infatuated with expensive high technology at precisely the wrong moment in our economic history and recommend that we forgo high technology in order to emphasize austere weapons in large numbers.
This is an important recommendation for at least three reasons. First, the recommendation is consequential. If the reformers’ analysis is correct, their recommendation could dramatically strengthen our national security. On the other hand, it could just as dramatically injure our security if they are wrong. Second, the reformers have made the technology issue the centerpiece of the movement. This issue receives their heaviest documentation and, perhaps, enjoys the broadest public appeal. Therefore, it may be the reform movement’s strongest recommendation analytically and politically. Last, the armed services have chosen to engage the reformers in debate primarily on this issue.
The military reform movement’s critique of military high technology is uneven. The reformers deserve praise for warning that not every increment of performance is worth its price, that technological complexity can reduce readiness, that enemy numbers have a "quality" all their own, and that the United States may not be able to afford a military establishment equal to American commitments. However, the critique has flaws, too. The flaws concern the movement’s assessment of the cost-effectiveness of military high technology, the peculiarity of the American reliance on high technology, and, most important, the economies military reformers expect to realize in austere weaponry.
assessing cost-effectiveness
Military reformers make an important mistake in the way they assess the cost-effectiveness of American high-technology weapons. They usually disregard performance factors. A deletion such as this is inexplicable, particularly when one remembers that reformers consider "effectiveness" to receive an unfair hearing in military circles. Many reformers compound this mistake by comparing the cost of modern weapons with the cost of weapons forty years ago.
In the years since World War II. . . the cost of a tank [has] gone up by a factor of ten, the cost of an airplane by a factor of 100, and the cost of anti-air weapons by a factor of 2000. . . . (calculated in constant dollars)16
A comparison like this is inherently unfair. From the very start, its relevance is questionable. No one proposes to exchange modern weapons for their World War II antecedents. In addition, the figures distort the cost of modern weapons. The "constant dollars" of the calculation almost certainly rely on an index called the gross national product (GNP) deflator. This index is one that measures price changes across the entire economy. Many agencies in the federal government use this index, including the Department of Defense. What reformers do not recognize is that the defense industry has become an increasingly specialized and increasingly small sector of the American economy since World War II. Inflation in defense industry has not followed the general pattern of inflation. DOD planners predict that the rate of inflation in defense industries over the next few years will be twice that of the general economy.17 They make the prediction because this is the pattern of inflation established in the past. Comparisons of World War II and modern weapons will necessarily favor the earlier ones when the GNP deflator is used. More important, comparisons like the one above underestimate the difficulty of comparing the performance of weapons separated by several technological generations. The following example demonstrates this point.
The F-16 is a modern jet fighter-bomber similar in size and range to the B-17 of World War II. Comparing the cost of these aircraft reveals that the F-16 is 38 times more expensive. Adjust for inflation and the F-l6 is three-to-four times more expensive than the B-17. Is the F-16 too expensive? That ought to depend in part on what the F-16 can do. According to General Dynamics (which published this comparison), the F-16 requires only one-third the number of sorties to deliver comparable bomb loads. It is capable of three times the number of sorties per day. It can bomb six times more accurately and has a limited capacity to operate in foul weather. In a sustained, clear-weather operation, one F-16 could replace eight or nine B-l7s and eighty or ninety aircrew members. The advanced technology in the F-l6 makes it operationally simpler than the B-17, hence fewer aircraft and crews are required.18 This is a simple comparison, but it suggests that the F-l6, though expensive, is not too expensive. It conceivably might be twice as expensive and still be worth the price. The suspicion lingers, however, that this comparison is unreasonable. Is it really fair to compare a modern tactical fighter with a World War II strategic bomber that was obsolete before the war ended?
Someone will rejoin, "If one is going to compare today’s fighters with Second World War strategic bombers, to what does one compare the B-l?" This is a legitimate question, and it illustrates how difficult it is to compare modern weapons to those of World War II. There were no airplanes in the Second World War remotely like the B-1 in performance or cost. Only aircraft carrier task forces matched the B-l’s intercontinental range and, in the combined capabilities of their aircraft, a B- l’s deliverable ordnance. Is this a fair comparison? If so, where does a fair comparison stop—with the aircraft carriers, airplanes, and men to operate them? Or should it also include escort ships and logistical infrastructure? How one answers these questions is largely the outcome of decisions one has already made about the merits of high technology. The fact is that there were no weapons in World War II like the B-l or F-16 in capability or cost. The comparison itself is inherently unfair.
Assessing the relative cost-effectiveness of weapons is a critically important step in the introduction of high technology into the American armed services. In an ideal world, we would agree on the techniques to assess that cost, and our techniques would be relevant and fair. As a practical matter, all comparisons simplify reality. All have limitations and biases. Even in a practical world, however, one does not need to accept the biases in the military reformers’ approach to assessing the cost-effectiveness of modern weapons.
A corollary of mistaken cost assessment is the belief among military reformers that expensive American technology is responsible for the Soviet numerical advantage in weapons. Having encouraged everyone to reconsider resource expenditure as a measure of defense progress, military reformers promptly forget that the Soviets spend twice as much as we do on military equipment procurement.19 In reality, the Soviets procure twice as many weapons as we do, in spite of technology, not because of it. The level of difference in technological sophistication between American and Soviet weapons is almost indiscernible. In general, our latest technology becomes operational just as the same technology enters system test and evaluation in the Soviet Union. Military reformers interpret crude finish and low esteem for human factors as marks of modest technology in Soviet weapons. They are seriously mistaken. The better measure of technology relates to the factor military reformers are most reluctant to consider— weapon performance.
infatuation
The military reform movement is mistaken when it accuses the American military of having a peculiar preference for, or infatuation with, high technology. This is surely wrong. The Soviet Union’s latest generation of combat planes, tanks, and ships benefits from the best technology of which the Soviets are capable. During the life span of this generation of basic weapon designs, we can expect to see expensive technological evolution. When present designs are no longer susceptible to evolutionary modification, we can predict newer and more costly replacements. The Soviet approach to adopting military high technology differs in important ways from our own, but the Soviet interest in high technology is equally powerful. So is the interest of our allies and friends.
The military reformers who criticize the sophistication of tactical aircraft like the F-16 compared to the simplicity of its original design forget that four of our NATO allies, partners in the production and development of the F-16, asked for sophisticated technology and additional capability.20 The Europeans required a multirole aircraft not the air combat fighter the F-16 was originally designed to be. Our allies accepted a substantial increase in cost for this technology and capability. Military reformers also forget that in the next few years the most advanced multirole tactical aircraft in Europe, the Panavia Tornado, will be European, not American. Even the British, who gently chide Americans concerning our technological solutions to military problems, speak proudly of the high technology they have so energetically applied to their own weapons, ships, and planes. As a result of the Anglo-Argentine War over the Falkland Islands, the Third World’s interest in military high technology has become clear to all. In reality, the pursuit of high technology is endemic to the competition of modern military systems. There is nothing peculiarly American about it except our lead.
economies
The most important flaw in the military reform movement’s case against military high technology is the recommendation to exchange it for more modest technology in large numbers. Reformers imply that this exchange is a solution for the military problem of adverse numerical ratios and a solution to the economic problem posed by high defense budgets. Their recommendation means more than the reconsideration of a few weapons; it urges substantial changes in conventional force posture.
Twenty years ago, defense planners were galvanized by a new defense strategy, Flexible Response, and undertook a study of conventional military requirements to assure American security interests. They identified military objectives in eleven theaters; they hypothesized campaigns to secure those objectives; they calculated the forces and material needed to campaign successfully; and they determined the contingencies American forces would need to meet simultaneously. The planners accounted for the contributions of allies and the resources of opponents. They scrutinized organizations and equipment. They considered the need for overseas deployments, strategic reserves, immediate reinforcements, and long-term support requirements. At the end of the study, the planners stated the need for a conventional force posture: 28 1/3 divisions, 41 fighter-attack wings, and 15 aircraft carrier task forces.21 The military reformers’ recommendation assaults this fixed force posture but without the benefit of systematic reappraisal. A systematic approach to assessing defense requirements is not an academic nicety. No other approach feasibly identifies how much military power is enough for a nation’s security, reveals what kinds of military power are most necessary, and establishes what the comparative costs of force postures are.
At the reform movement’s level of abstraction, no one can estimate how much military power is enough or what the cost of transition from high to modest technology will be. That transition will be costly seems clear. What is the nature of that cost? In order to think about that question, one must reduce the level of abstraction by putting words in reformers’ mouths.
Were reformers to decide that American security objectives require general-purpose forces equal in number to those of the Soviet Union (a reasonable inference from their criticism), the United States would require an additional 800,000 soldiers in ground forces, 1300 tactical aircraft, 38,000 tanks, and 200 warships. A force expansion of this scale is the equivalent of nearly a two-fold increase in the number of personnel assigned to ground forces, a two-thirds increase in the number of tactical air wings, a four-fold increase in the number of tanks, and a one-half increase in the number of warships. On balance, this level of force expansion represents an increase of 60 to 70 percent in the size of general-purpose forces. Expansion on this scale would stimulate enduring increases in military spending. Even if one assumes that so much austere weaponry could be acquired with the identical procurement expenditure needed for high technology arms, associated costs in other appropriations categories would be certain to rise. An increased operations and maintenance expenditure would be necessary for training, equipment, and facilities maintenance, war reserves, and readiness. Force expansion also implies greater expenditure for military construction, family housing, and management services. Eventually, it implies greater expenditure for retired pay. It certainly means a significant increase in military personnel expenditure, perhaps as much as $16 billion. The total cost of expanding general-purpose forces by 60-70 percent could be $40-50 billion annually. Had the military reform movement recommended a force posture change of this magnitude in time for the FY83 defense budget, that budget might have been $300 billion instead of $258 billion. (Figures are based on the FY83 Defense Budget-Total Obligational Authority.) Obviously, this force posture would not be cheaper, easier to pay for, or any less of a mortgage on the future than the current one. No American administration has been willing to impose the cost of so large a conventional force posture on the economy or the American people in peacetime. Indeed, American presidents have encouraged, and sometimes forced, the military services to adopt high technology to reduce the need for larger conventional forces and allow smaller defense budgets.
Some will object to this analysis, contending that the exchange of high technology for more modest technology will result in savings in research and development (R&D), procurement, and operations and maintenance expenditures. These objections are unanswerable in the abstract, but several considerations suggest that such an exchange cannot generate savings if American general-purpose forces are numerically equal to those of the Soviet Union. First, R&D expenditure will need to remain at comparable levels. Without aggressive R&D, the United States would risk technological surprise. The military reform movement’s argument respecting simpler equipment may have merit, but it has no merit as an argument for technological inferiority. Second, there may be no savings in procurement if the numerical requirements of expanded force posture oblige too many modest units. The amount of money the United States is prepared to spend for M-1 tanks cannot buy enough modern medium tanks to equal the Soviet inventory. No modern medium tank is so inexpensive. Similarly, the amount the United States is willing to spend on warships and tactical aircraft is probably too low to permit us to equal Soviet inventories. Last, the operations and maintenance efficiencies of simpler technology may not be great enough to provide savings if too many modest items are procured. For example, the F-15 costs twice as much to operate as the F-4 and is twice as expensive to procure.22 At first glance, exchanging the F-15 for the F-4 would appear to offer impressive savings. This depends on how many F-4s are acquired. If the United States were to replace each of the 1000 F-15s in its inventory with two F-4s, no saving would follow either in operations or procurement expenses. The same amount of money would be spent from these accounts for a force twice as large. The total defense budget, however, would not be the same. The F-4 fleet would require twice as many maintenance personnel and four times as many aviators as the F-15 fleet. This personnel cost quickly constrains force expansion and sets in motion pressure to limit forces. Moreover, United States air strength would still be 300 tactical aircraft short of numerical equality with the Soviet Union. Coping with this shortfall would make the F-4 fleet even more expensive than the F-15 fleet it replaced.
Under the conditions we have hypothesized for force expansion—general-purpose forces equal in number to those of the Soviet Union— it is realistic to expect significant increases in the defense budget. Military reformers express no clear opinion regarding overall defense spending, but the thematic evidence in the movement’s literature suggests that reformers do not relish significant real growth in the defense budget. If so, then military reformers will be forced to choose between buying all the equipment they want and permitting it to be unready for war or accepting numerical inferiority. No other choices hold the line on the defense budget.
Reformers have hinted about their choice. They roundly denounce the failure of the armed forces to become fully ready for war in spare parts, training, and war reserves. They have never recommended totally replacing expensive advanced weapons with fractionally less-expensive modest ones. They have never endorsed significant force expansion or explained what "greater numbers" of austere weapons really means. One can infer from their comments and judicious silence that military reformers will not object to a numerically inferior austere force.
What, then, do the foregoing considerations do to the reformers’ central criticism that military high technology keeps the United States from matching Soviet numbers and holding the defense budget within tolerable limits? Nothing, some reformers will say. Some will say that numerical equality is unnecessary. After all, we would probably fight the Soviet Union within the context of the North Atlantic alliance, not singly. This rebuttal reduces the military reform movement’s recommendation to a logical absurdity. High technology cannot be bad for national security because it is too expensive to match Soviet numbers and modest technology good when the same is true for it. This is the logical equivalent of arguing that the chief benefit of modest technology, numbers, is unimportant. It is the practical equivalent of admitting that the military reform movement has no solution to the interrelated problems of numerical imbalance, high defense budgets, and painful sacrifice for national defense.
The only escape from the sacrifice of high defense budgets requires coordinating the transition in technology with a reduction in military commitments. No recent administration has been willing to reduce our security commitments to our allies and friends. In fact, the military commitments of the United States have expanded over the past two administrations. The evolving military strategy of the Reagan administration foresees expanding military options further in a doctrine of protracted war. When one considers our commitments, the benefits of high technology, and the cost of transition to austere weaponry, one sees some merit in what one defense analyst has puckishly offered as the solution to the quality versus quantity debate, "What we need are force multipliers and lots of them."23
The conceptual and analytical flaws in the military reformers’ critique of military high technology invalidate their recommendation; however, that is all it does. These flaws do not invalidate criticisms of specific weapons, old mistakes, or current practices. They do not prove that we are exhausting all avenues available to multiply the effects of our forces. They do not prove that our force posture is adequate to perform all the missions assigned to it. These flaws suggest only three things: First, military high technology is a legitimate resource to tap as we search for solutions to our military problems. Second, the economic and military advantages of exchanging quality for quantity remain to be demonstrated in a clear, systematic analysis. Last, any solution to our military problems we adopt will have negative consequences, too, and those consequences will usually be expensive.
Several military reform issues have already influenced military and industrial circles. This influence is preliminary to be sure, but it indicates which reform issues are most compelling and may reveal how military reform issues are likely to affect the military services in the future.
First, the Army recently revised a basic field manual to place more emphasis on maneuver and reportedly has plans for a significant doctrinal change in the future. One of the effects of this prospective change will be a requirement for fighting vehicles with substantially different tactical qualities.
Second, the Army has also increased the tour lengths for officers assigned to combat units in order to reduce personnel turnover in combat units and promote social integrity.24
Third, in March 1982, a National Guard task force published a plan to guide the Army and Air Guard for the rest of the century. It recommended a war style of maneuver and simpler weapons for the Guard.25
Fourth, the Air Force has begun Project Warrior "to encourage increased familiarity with war-fighting theories’’26
Fifth, officials at General Dynamics are concerned that prospective avionics improvements in the F-16 will make their airplane unaffordable and that technical problems with these improvements will stain the F-l6’s reputation for reliability. Officers in the Tactical Air Command have reportedly recommended reducing the scope of these avionic improvements in order to buy more airplanes.27
The military reform issues that have been most influential so far are those which concern war styles, the social integrity of combat units, and simpler technology. Why have these issues been influential? Because military tradition, current trends, long-standing themes, or natural organizational interest recommend them. The military’s interest in war styles and the social integrity of combat units is consistent with tradition and part of what appears to be a strengthening conservative trend in American military institutions. From 1950 to 1970, American military institutions increasingly resembled the civilian institutions surrounding them. Sociologists call this phenomenon "convergence," and they produced a small but interesting literature speculating into the social and political implications of structural isomorphism. (It may be that some of the concerns expressed in the reform movement’s second theme have been informed by this literature.) In the early l970s, however, sociologists began to detect evidence of increasing divergence between American military and civilian institutions following twenty years of increasing similarity.28 The boundaries of divergence are still not completely clear, but the institutional interest of active and reserve forces in war styles and social integrity in combat is completely harmonious with this conservative trend toward greater contrast with civilian institutions.
The military interest in war styles is also consistent with the postwar theme of American military institutions which emphasizes force multiplication. Since the 1950s, the United States has sought means to multiply the effect of American military forces in order to cope with the threat posed by numerically superior Communist conventional military forces in Europe and Asia. Typically, the United States sought the answer to this problem in technology. However, according to at least one expert observer, technology may have yielded most of the answers it is going to give. 29 Consequently, to return to more traditional, nontechnological means to multiply the effects of forces is perfectly consistent with this postwar theme. The most influential military reformer has made the case for the maneuver war style precisely in terms of force multiplication.30
The ready interest of the National Guard in simpler technology is consistent with its natural organizational interest. During the past 15 years, active duty forces have called on the Guard for support more than ever before in peacetime. The Guard also has greater responsibility than ever before in future wars. Simple, easily maintained technology is what an organization like the Guard needs to preserve its missions. The organizational interest of aircraft companies and Air Force major commands in holding down the cost of important aircraft programs is self-evident.
Political pressure from the military reform movement seems unlikely to reform thoroughly the American armed services or to change significantly the role of high technology in them. In spite of the movement’s critical themes and lengthy list of reform proposals, the most influential military reform issues are those that do not reform at all. Paradoxically, they support strong traditional interests and advance established trends and themes in the armed services. The implication of this paradox is that other reform issues may have influence only insofar as forces for the status quo recommend them. Many military reform issues are so recommended; thus, the military reform movement is likely to influence many minor and some important issues for the foreseeable future. For example, given the recent public interest in reforming the Joint Chiefs of Staff, military reformers might have an important contribution to make toward the examination of the JCS, which is sure to continue. The military reform recommendation respecting military high technology is an exceptional case. The recommendation to forgo high technology bucks powerful contemporary trends evident in military establishments throughout the world. It also lacks thorough analysis and seriously misjudges the economies to be realized in exchanging high technology for modest technology. In the final analysis, this recommendation lacks authority because of the false economies it accepts. The recommendation is unlikely to succeed as stated or to enhance national security if it does. However, the privileged position of the reformers and the economic impact of high defense budgets virtually guarantee that the issue will remain a subject of attentive concern. This concern is unlikely to slow the pace of technological advance in the armed forces, but it may give rise to new perceptions and prescriptions regarding the technologies the armed services introduce. This is not reform precisely, but it may be an influence which, in the long run, the armed services will come to value as much as the technology itself.
Department of Political Science
USAF Academy, Colorado
Notes
1. A. K. Marsh, "Military Reform Caucus Seeks Targets," Aviation Week & Space Technology, March 29, 1982.
2. James Fallows, National Defense (New York: Random House, 1981), "Introduction."
3. Ibid., Chapter 6.
4. F. R. Wood, "Air Force Officers: Changing Prestige and Civilianization," Armed Forces and Society, Spring 1980, pp. 483-506.
5. Gary Hart, "What’s Wrong with the Military?" New York Times Magazine, February 14, 1982; J. Record, "The Fortunes of War," Harper’s, April 1980; Military Reform Caucus "Options for Action on the FY83 Defense Budget"; Fallows, Chapter 5.
6. E. Luttwak, "The American Style of Warfare and the Military Balance," Air Force, August 1979.
7. Fallows, Chapter 2.
8. Ibid., pp. 4-11.
9. Ibid., pp. 173-76.
10. G. Hart, News Release, July 1, 1980, "FY81 Defense Authorization," p. 1.
11. Ibid.
12. Hart, "What’s Wrong with the Military?" p. 40.
13. J. Alter and P. Keisling, "35 Ways to Cut the Defense Budget," Washington Monthly, April 1982.
14. Fallows, pp. 4-11.
15. Fallows, Chapter 3; Hart, "What’s Wrong with the Military?"; P. J. Bernstein, "Critics Debate Reagan’s Naval Strategy," Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, March 7, 1982.
16. P. Sprey, Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee condensed in James Fallows’s "Muscle-Bound Superpower," The Atlantic, October 1979, p. 64.
17. L. J. Korb, "Defense Decision-Making and the Defense Budget," presented at the Teaching National Security Workshop, Amelia Island Plantation, Florida, June 7, 1982.
18. K. Jackson, "Quality, Quantity and Technology—A Perspective on Fighter Development," SAE Technical Paper Series, Aerospace Congress and Exposition; Anaheim, California, October 5-8, 1981.
19. William D. Perry, "Fallows’ Fallacies," International Security, Spring 1982.
20. Interview with Major General James A. Abrahamson, USAF, in a television documentary for PBS/WGBH Boston entitled "Inside Europe: F-16 Sale of the Century," 1979.
21. W. Kaufmann, Planning Conventional Forces: 1950-80 (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1982).
22. F. C. Spinney, "Defense Facts of Life," (Staff Paper, OSD/ PA&E, 5 December 1980.)
23. Benjamin Lambeth, Faculty Seminar, USAF Academy, 18 February 1982.
24. J. Fialka," ‘Congressional Military Reform Caucus’ Lacks a Budget but Has Power to Provoke the Pentagon," Wall Street Journal, April 13, 1982.
25. Vista 1999: A Long-Range Look at the Future of the Army and Air National Guard, March 1982.
26. General Lew Allen, Jr., Chief of Staff Bulletin to USAF Major Commands, February 1982.
27. W. Mossberg, "Costly Changes in F-16 Gear Drawing Fire," Wall Street Journal, April 12, 1982.
28. Charles Moskos, The American Enlisted Man (New York: Sage, 1970), p. 70.
29. Perry, "Fallows’ Fallacies."
30 J. Boyd, "Patterns of Conflict," (briefing notes and graphics of three-hour presentation, September 1981).
Contributor
Captain Forrest K Waller, Jr.
(USAFA: M.P.A. Princeton University), is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the USAF Academy. He has served as a DOD staff intelligence analyst. Hq United States Support Activities Group (Thailand). and as senior intelligence editor-briefer for the Chief of Staff, Hq USAF Intelligence. He has held internships in the Executive Office of the President and at the Department of State. Captain Wallet is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow of Princeton University and a Distinguished Graduate of Squadron Officer School.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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