8/6/2019 0203srf

1/54

An Air ForceAssociation

SpecialReport

St r at egy,

The Rising Imperative of Air and Space Power

February 2003

and For cesRequir ement s,

8/6/2019 0203srf

2/54

The Air Force AssociationThe Air Force Association (AFA) is anindependent, nonprofit civilian organi-zation promoting public understandingof aerospace p ower and the p ivotal roleit plays in the security of the nation.AFA publishesAir Force Magazine,sponsors national symposia, and dis-seminates information th rough ou t-reach pr ograms of its affiliate, theAerosp ace Educ ation Foundation. Learnmore abou t AFA by visiting us on theWeb at w ww.afa.org.

2003 The Air Force Association

Published 2003 by Aerospace Education Foundation

1501 Lee Highway

Arlington VA 22209-1198

Tel: (703) 247-5839

Fax: (703) 247-5853

www.aef.org Design and graphics by Guy Aceto

The Aerospace Education Foundation

The Aerospace Education Foundation(AEF) is dedicated to ensuringAmericas aerospace excellencethrough education, scholarships, grants,awards, and public awareness programs.The Foundation also publishes a seriesof studies and forums on aerospace andnational secu rity. The Eaker Institute isthe p ublic po licy and research arm ofAEF.

AEF works through a network oftho usands of Air Force Associationmembers and more than 200 chaptersto d istribute educational material toschools and concerned citizens. Anexamp le of this include s "Visions o fExp loration," an AEF/USA Today multi-disciplinary science, math, and socialstudies program. To find out how youcan supp ort aerospace ex cellence visitus on the Web at w ww.aef.org.

8/6/2019 0203srf

3/54

St r at egy, Requir ement s, and For ces

After 20 years ofservice in the USAir For ce, Joh nCorrell joined thestaff ofAir ForceMagazin e, journ alof t he Air ForceAssociation, in198 2. He wa seditor in chieffrom 1984 to2002. He contin -

ues to study an dwrite aboutnational defenseand air and spacepower.

By John T. CorrellFebruary 2003

1Timeline 19892002Chapter 1: The New World OrderAs the Cold War ended, expectationsran freely. The Base Force, the Gu lfWar, and Option C.

Chapte r 2: Bottom-UpClinton and Aspin cut defenseagainwith ramifications to bedet erm ined later. The Botto m-Up Reviewset the mo ld for the force in the 1990s.

Chapte r 3: Engagement a nd Enlargement

Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Serbia, limited war,and Moot wah .

Chapte r 4: The Imbal ance Develops and WorsensDefense is cut 15 years in a row, but thearmed forces are busier than be fore.The Qu adren nial Defense Review,Optem po/ Perstempo, and t he DeathSpiral.

Chapter 5: The Revolution in M ilit ary AffairsThere is an alternative to the attritionmodel of warfare and the clash of forceon force.

Chapte r 6 : Transformat ion and TerrorismThe Bush Administration explores therevitalization o f the armed forces. TheRumsfeld Review, QDR 2, and the War onTerrorism.

Chapte r 7: The Problem of ResourcesWe must not only defeat terrorism butalso restore th e force and transform it tomeet the needs of tomorrow. This wasgoing to be a stretch , even before thesurplus turne d into a deficit.

Chapter 8: Global Vigilance, Reach, and PowerAir and space forces are central totransformationand to th e leadership ofthe United States in world affairs.

A Force for the MissionSome conclusions and p ropo sitions.

References

24

8

11

15

19

24

31

36

43

46

8/6/2019 0203srf

4/54

2

Timel ine 19892002

Events

George H.W. Bush Administration beginsTiananmen SquareFall of the Berlin WallOperation Just Cause in Panama

Iraq invades KuwaitGermany reunifies

Gulf WarOperation Provide Comfort (forerunner of Northern Watch) beginsWarsaw Pact collapsesMoscow coup attemptUSSR ceases to exist

Operation Southern Watch begins

Clinton Administration beginsOperation Deny Flight in Bosnia beginsSomalia mission fiasco

Haiti intervention

Operation Deliberate Force in BosniaUS peacekeepers to Bosnia

Attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia

Cruise missile strikes in Sudan, AfghanistanOperation Desert Fox, strikes in Iraq

Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland join NATOAir War over Serbia

Attack on USS Cole

George W. Bush Administration begins9/11 terrorist attacksOperations Noble Eagle and Enduring Freedom begin

ABM treaty terminatedCrises: IndiaPakistan/IsraelPalestineInternational Criminal Court establishedConfrontation with IraqNorth Korea reveals nuclear weapons programDepartment of Homeland Security created

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

1989

8/6/2019 0203srf

5/54

3

Strategy, Doctrine, Policy

Forward Presence/Crisis Response

Regional Defense strategyNew World OrderGlobal Reach, Global Power

Revolution in Military Affairs

Limited Objectives (Aspin)

Multilateral Peace OperationsEngagement and Enlargement

Military Operations Other Than WarDefend important but not necessarily vital interests

Joint Vision 2010

Shape, Respond, Prepare defense strategyTransformation

Joint Vision 2020

Assure, Dissuage, Deter, Defeat defense strategyHomeland SecurityNo sanctuary for terrorism

PreemptionNational Security Strategy 2002

Forces and Requirements

The Base Force

SAC stands down from alert

Aspins Option CInvoluntary separation of military personnel

Bottom-Up Review2 MRC force-sizing standard

Commission on Roles and MissionsNuclear Posture ReviewExperimental Air Expeditionary Task Forces

Pilot shortage begins

Quadrennial Defense Review 1997National Defense Panel

Defense budget bottoms out after 13 reductions in a row

Aerospace Expeditionary Force Cycle 1

Space CommissionDOD designates USAF Executive Agent for SpaceQuadrennial Defense Review 20014-2-1 force-sizing standard

Nuclear Posture Review

8/6/2019 0203srf

6/54

and a redu ced force struc ture. Through-out the Cold War, US force s were basedoverseas in large numbers under anoperational doctrine of forward defense.He thought it was time to reduce thenumbers of forces pe rmanently stationedabroad and to rely more on p eriodicdeployments to demonstrate commitmentand p rotec t American interests.

The Base ForceThe new c oncept Powell proposed

was Forw ard Presen ce/ Crisis Re-sponse. Initially, the Army, sup port ed by

the Air Force, vigorously op po sedabandoning the concept of forwarddefense.3 The force structure, dubbedthe Base Force, would b e abou t 25perce nt smaller than the force in 1989.

In the ensuing month s, Powellovercame the ob jections of the servicesand convinced Secretary of DefenseRichard B. Cheney. In June 1990,Cheney endor sed Powells p roposal,and President George W. Bush agreed tothe new strategy and force structure.4

Meanwhile, the US Air Force wasexploring ideas that w ould be critically

important to th e evolving defensestrategy. An Air Force wh ite pap erintrod uce d the phrase, Global Reach ,Global Power, and e mp hasized th e longreach and effectiveness of airpow er andaerospace techn ologies in an era inwh ich we b elieve the American pe oplewill have low tolerance for prolongedcombat op erations or mounting casual-ties.5

Air Force thinkers in the Pentagonwere expressing an even bolder con-cep t: the projection of global powerfrom Amer ican shore s.6 Lon g-range Air

Force aircraft, op erating from b ases inthe United States, could reach objectivesanywhere in th e w orld. During the ColdWar, bombers had been assigned againsttarget s in the Soviet Union. With the ColdWar end ing, they could take o n long-range convent ional missions as well.

These views w ould soon look pro-phetic. They we re also consistent withPowe lls Crisis Resp onse theme,although Powell, no great fan of airpower,may not have seen it that w ay. Years late r,

1 Francis Fukuyama, The End

of History, The National

Interest, Summer 1989.

2 Colin Powell. My American

Journey. Ballantine, 1996, p.

437-438.

3Lorna S. Jaffe, The

Development of the Base

Force, 19891992, OJCS, July

1993.4 Jaffe.

5 Global ReachGlobal

Power, US Air Force, June

1990.

6 James W. Canan, Global

Power From American

Shores, Air ForceMagazine,

October 1989.

h en the Berlin Wall fell in November1989, the Cold War was not quite

over yet, but the end was in sight. Bigchanges lay ahead for the armed forcesof the United States:

For mo re th an 40 years, US forces haddefined them selves in terms of a globalconfrontation with the Soviet Union.Anyth ing else was regarded as a lesserincluded con tingency. Even Vietnam,which cost 47,000 Amer ican lives, wasstrategically a secondary consideration.The Pentagon never lost its focus ondeterring and containing the military

pow er of the USSR.In 1989 , however, the Soviet Unionand th e Warsaw Pact w ere t ottering,and the US forces faced fundamentalquestions about th e future of theirmissions, size, force structure, andbudgets.

Glasnost(openne ss) andperestroika (restructur ing) had swe ptthe Soviet Union. On Nov. 9, the EastGerman government opened its bordersand tore dow n barriers in the BerlinWall, which had long stood as the mostvisible symbol of Soviet domination of

Europe.Celebrations of peace were u nder-way.

Francis Fuku yama, a mid-level officialat the State Departmen t, created asensation in th e summer o f 1989 withhis theory of the End of History, inwh ich he argued that alternatives toWester n liberalism had bee n ex -hausted and that the centuries ofideological struggle were over.1

The popu lar percep tion was that theUS armed forces would soon be leftwith little or nothing to do. The feeling

was captured by aNew York DailyNews headline: Pent agon Needs a FewGood Enemies.

Unbeknow n to the public, similarthoughts were in the mind of the newChairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,Army Gen. Colin L. Powell. Within amonth of taking office in Octob er 1989,he w as developing a slide presen tationent itled Strategic Overview1994 :When You Lose Your Best Enemy.2

Powell looked ahead to a new strategy

1 The New Wor l d Or der

wPentagon Needsa Few GoodEnemiesHeadline, NewYork Daily News,

June 21, 1989

8/6/2019 0203srf

7/54

Powell wo uld say, When I hear som e-one te ll me w hat airpower can d o, Ihead for the bunker.7

Under ordinary circumstances, a majorchange in defense po licy would have beenbig new s. In a speech Aug 2, 1990, Bushproclaimed a new strategy, emphasizingthe sh ift to a regional emph asis.

In a world less driven by an immed iatethreat to Europe and the danger of globalwarin a world where the size of ourforces will increasingly be shaped b y theneeds of regional contingencies andpeacetime presencewe know that ourforces can be smaller, Bush said, fore -casting that by 1995 our security needscan be met by an active force 25 percentsmaller than tod ays.8

However, Bushs announcement wasovershadowed by even bigger n ews. Thesame d ay, Iraqi dictator Saddam Husseininvaded Kuwait, setting off the chain ofevents that would culminate in the PersianGulf War.

The United States initiated OperationDesert Shield, pouring forces and equip-ment into the Gulf area over the next sixmonths. Bush began recru iting a coalitionof nations to join the e ffort of eject ingSaddam from Kuwait.

Bush con tinued to reposition USforeign p olicy. In September, lookingbeyond the gravity of the crisis in theGulf, Bush cited a new relationship w iththe Soviet Union and declared th e emer-gence of a new world o rder.9 It would

be an era in which th e nations of theworld, East and West, can p rospe r andlive in h armony.

In Novemb er, the UN Secu rity Council,which had already condemned theinvasion of Kuwait, autho rized t he use ofall nece ssary means if Iraq did notwithdraw by Jan. 15. The resolutionpassed, 12-2-1. Cuba and Yemen votedagainst it, and China abstained .

Desert StormSaddam did not w ithdraw, and th e Gulf

WarOperation Desert Storm began on

Jan. 17, 1991. Airpower poun ded Iraq for42 days, during wh ich almost half ofIraqs armor was destroyed outright.Between 50 and 75 p ercent of Iraqstroops in the first two echelons wereeither casualties or deserters.

On the first n ight of th e w ar, B-52stook off from Barksdale AFB, La.,conducted attacks in Iraq, flying 35 hoursbefore landing again at Barksdale.(Projecting p ower from Americanshores, although the full demonstration

was still eight years in th e futu re, inSerbia.)

In the final four days of the w ar,coalition ground troops, supported byairpower, surged into Kuwait and droveout the staggering Iraqis, inflicting moredamage on them in the Moth er o f AllRetreats.

The fighting stopped on Feb. 28. Iraqagreed on April 11 to accep t all of theterms imposed by the United Nations.Saddam had been thrown out ofKuwait, as the UN had authorized, butthe settlement and the outcome of theGulf War left him in power in Iraq. Tenyears later, that decision would havedire ramifications.

US leaders, both in th e White Hou seand the Pentagon, studied w hat hadhappened in the Gulf and drew conclu-sions. For his part, Bush said thatLesson num ber one from the Gulf Warwas the value of airpower.10 That wasfairly obvious at t he time, although itwould soon come under challenge andheavy reinterp retation by groundpower advocates.

It was further noted that the GulfWarin sharp con trast to Vietnamprecisely followed the WeinbergerDoctrine (referred to often but errone-ously as the Powe ll Doctrine).

In 1984, Caspar Weinbe rger, the nSecretary of Defense, announced a newpolicy on the use of military force.Troops would not be committed to

combat unless a vital national interestwas at stake, and unt il other optionshad been exhausted. Political andmilitary objectives had to be clearlydefined and achievable. If we went towar, it would be with sufficient forceand a determination to win. Thereshould be some reasonable assuranceof supp ort from t he American p ublicand Congress.11

Weinbergers doctrine had takenconsiderable criticism, much of it fromdiplomats and n ewspap er columnists,but the Gulf War vindicated his posi-

tion.Unfortunate ly, the nation d id notabsorb all of the lessons indicated orcon firmed by the Gulf War. For ex ample,the United States has a history of under-estimating in peacetime the forces that itwill requ ire in wart ime. The Gulf Warultimately requ ired a third more fighterforces than th e strategy estimated. Itrequired m ost of the Air Forces bestaircraft and the largest coalition air fleetto see c omb at since World War II.12

5

7David Halberstram. War in a

Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton,

and the Generals. Scribner,

2001, p 42.

8 George H.W. Bush, speech at

the Aspen Institute Symposium,

Aug. 2, 1990. The new national

defense strategy was

promulgated formally by Powell

in January 1992 and restated by

Cheney in January 1993.

9 George H.W. Bush, Toward a

New World Order, Address to

Joint Session of Congress, Sept.

11, 1990.

10 James W. Canan, Lesson

Number One, Air Force

Magazine, October 1991.

11 Caspar Weinberger, The Uses

of Military Power, National

Press Club, Nov. 28, 1984.

12 Gen. John Michael Loh,

remarks at Air Force Association

symposium, Orlando, Fla., Jan.

31, 1992.

8/6/2019 0203srf

8/54

RAND Corp. analysts, studying regionalconflict for the Pentagon, reported apatt ern in which US ability to forecastfuture force needs h as been far frompe rfect. Peak US force dep loyments inKorea, Vietnam, and Iraq ex ceededplanners prew ar expec tations by afacto r of tw o in c ritical areas.13

Drawdown in WartimeThe Gulf War was the only war the

United States had ever fought in themiddle of a force drawdown. TheAdministration stuck to its Base Forceplans, which held that, by 1995, opera-tions would end or forces wou ld bedrawn do wn at 314 Europ ean sites, andforces in Europe w ould be cut in half.14

In Februar y 1991, with the Gulf Warstill in progress, the services beganmajor strength reductions, includingthe involuntary separation o f personne l.Many of the p eop le forced ou t we reveterans who did not want to go.15

By 1992, the drawdown had left theAir Force with a surplus of pilots at atime when the airlines were not hir-ingcircumstances that would flip flopinto a wren ching pilot shortage a fewyears later. Congress p rovided c ashincentives to experience d veterans invarious specialties to induce separa-tions.16

Some critics saw this as a waste ofmoney. Congressional Budget Officeanalysts, surveying military com pe nsa-

tion and analyzing options,17

calculatedcoldly that, If fewe r p ersonnel areneeded in the future, military pay couldbe e ven lower th an it is today and stillbe com pe titive. CBO furth er said t hat,large-scale personnel reductions createthe p roblem of how to encourageexperienced personnel to leave themilitary rather than h ow to con vincethem to stay, and that limiting militarypay raises could accom plish the samegoal of increasing voluntar y separations,but, unlike the incentives, would offeradditional savings rather than offsetting

costs.Also cheering on the drawdown werethe critics wh o still could not imagine anysignificant need for military pow er in theyears to come. Pentagon Imagines NewEnemies to Fight in Post-Cold War Era,sneered aNew York Tim es headline Feb.17, 1992. The Tim es had supp osedly seenleaked documents revealing vigorousattempts within th e military establishmentto invent a men u of alarming war sce-narios that can be used to p revent further

reductions in forces or cancellations ofnew weapon systems.18

Aspin Enters the FrayThe issue of strategy and force

requirements to ok a critical fork wh enLes Aspin, chairman of th e House ArmedServices Committee and a futureSecretary of Defense, swung intoaction.

Aspin had been a Rhodes scholar, aneconomics professor, and for a shorttime in the 1960s, was a systems analystin the Pentagon for Secretary of De-fense Robert S. McNamara. He had beenin Congress since 1970, and was aleading voice on defense matters.

Not satisfied with the Base Forceprojections, Aspin developed fouropt ions for sizing th e armed forces.Some of his options were m ore extremethan other s, but Aspin signaled that theone to be taken seriously (the mostprudent and promising, he called it)was Option C.19

Option C proposed to cut the BaseForce by eight more Air Force wings,thr ee more Army divisions, and 110more ships. It called for a furtherreduction of 233,000 military person-nel, 93 perce nt of them to come fromthe active duty forces.20

Aspin developed a bench mark hecalled the Desert Stor m Equivalent,the force that w as supp osedly em-ployed in the Gulf War and approxi-

mately the force that wo uld be requ iredfor a major regional conflict in thefuture.21

He said that the Desert Storm Equiva-lent, the force t hat matter ed, con sistedof six h eavy divisions, an air-transp ort-able, early arriving light division, oneMarine division on land and an excessof one b rigade at sea, 24 Air Forcefighter squadrons, 70 heavy bombers,and two early arriving carrier battlegroups building up over time to fourcarrier battle groups including surfacecom batant s p roviding AEGIS defenses

and capability for launching largenumbers of cruise missiles.

Desert DrizzlePowell and others objected to Aspins

numbers and conclusions. Gen. MerrillA. McPeak, the Air Force Chief of Staff,said that Aspins figure of 24 fightersquadr ons amo unt ed t o Desert Drizzle,not Desert Storm. He said the actualDesert Stor m force had abou t 11 US AirForce fighter wing equivalents (33

6

13 Christopher Bowie et. al. The

New Calculus. RAND, 1993.

14 An Overview of the

Changing Department of

Defense: Strategy, Budgets,

and Forces, DOD, October

1991.

15 Bruce D. Callander, Going:

A Fifth of the Force, Air Force

Magazine, February 1991.

16 Bruce D. Callander,

Drawdown and Pain, Air

ForceMagazine, January 1992;

John T. `Correll, The Troop

Losses Mount, Air ForceMagazine, May 1992.

17CBO, Reducing the Deficit:

Spending and Revenue

Options, February 1993.

18Patrick E. Tyler, Pentagon

Imagines New Enemies to Fight

in Post-Cold War era, New

York Times, Feb. 17, 1992.

19 Les Aspin, An Approach to

Sizing American Conventional

Forces for the Post-Soviet Era:

Four Illustrative Options, Feb.

25, 1992; Aspin, letter to Air

Force Association, March 24,

1992.

20 Les Aspin, Defense 1997

Alternatives: SupplementalMaterials, March 24, 1992.

21 Aspin, Four Illustrative

Options, Feb. 25, 1992.

8/6/2019 0203srf

9/54

fighter squadrons) plus eight FWEsfrom allies for a total of 57 land-basedfighter squadrons.22

Aspin shrugged off criticism. McPeakis wrong and the Desert Storm equiva-lent could do the job, he said.23

The Base Force had become a ceilingrather than a floor, as Powell hadoriginally conceived it.24 The futureforce could be smaller than the BaseForce, but it could not be larger.

7

22 John T. Correll , The Base

Force Meets Option C, Air

ForceMagazine, June 1992.

23 Les Aspin, Pentagons

Weinbergerization of Defense

Debate, April 2, 1992.

24 Lorne S. Jaffe, The

Development of the Base Force,

1989-1992, OJCS, July 1993.

25 The Bottom-Up Review did

not specify personnel strength.

However, Aspins defense

budget, submitted six months

later, forecast 1999 active duty

levels at 390,000 for the Air

Force, 495,000 for the Army,

394,000 for the Navy, and

174,000 for the Marine Corps.

an overall reduction of 133,000

reserve personnel was

projected from 1994 through

1999.

The Force Base Force Option C BUR Force1991 1997 1997 1999

Air ForceFighter Wing Equivalents 22/12 15/11 10/8 13/7(active/reserve)

Personnel 511,000/202,000 430,000/200,000 364,000/193,000(active/reserve)

Bombers 268 181 Up to 184

ICBMs 1,000 550 500

ArmyDivisions 16/10/0 12/6/2 9/6/0 10/15(active/reserve, cadre)

Personnel 725,000/741,000 536,000/567,000 476,000/550,000(active/reserve)

NavyTotal ships 528 450 340 346

Carriers 15 13 12 12

Attack submarines 87 80 40

Assault ships 65 50 50

Personnel 571,000/150,000 501,000/118,000 432,000/112,000(active/reserve)

Marine CorpsDivisions 3/1 2.3/1 2/1 3/1(active/reserve)

Personnel 195,000/44,000 159,000/35,000 137,000/49,000(active/reserve)

Down t o t he Bot t om-Up Revi ew25

8/6/2019 0203srf

10/54

in January 1993, took defense $113.5billion below the Budget Summitbaseline.30

The Blind Budget CutThat was not eno ugh cutting for

Aspin. In March 1993, h e announced afurther reduct ion of $131.7 billion.Aspins proposal roughly doubled thecumulative reductions since 1990, andput defense $245.2 billion b elow theBudget Summ it. This budget begins touse resources freed by the end of theCold War to he lp at ho me, Aspin said.

The President has made clear that th echief threat we face is failure to revital-ize ou r ec ono my.31

Incred ibly, Aspin d id no t know wh atkind of force the new budget wouldbuy. That would be determined later ina Bottom-Up Review.32 For the mo-men t, Aspin said, what we re doing iskind of treading water.33 However, thegeneral inspiration for his plan wasOption C.

Sam Nunn, chairman of the SenateArmed Services Committee, and Aspinsfellow Democrat, was appalled. We

have been dealing with numbersgrabbed out of the air, he said. No oneknows where these cuts are going tocome from.34

As it turned out, the peop le working onthe Bottom-Up Review did not knoweither where the cuts were to be found.Through th e summer of 1993, the JointStaff worked o n force structure opt ionsthat might fulfill Aspins arbitrarybudget projections. Details soon leakedto the press.

r es i d e n t William J. Clinton came tooffice without much interest in

foreign policy and spring-loaded to cutdefense. When a member of Congresssought to engage him in a discussionabout Russia and China, Clinton inter-rupted, saying, I just went through thewhole campaign and no one talkedabout foreign policy at all, except for afew member s of the press.27

Powell recalled th at, at h is firstmeeting w ith defense leaders, the onlydefense issue of interest to Clinton w asgays in military, and so we sp ent the

next 105 minutes solely on ho mosexu-als in the armed forces.28

Clinton h ad chosen Aspin to be h isSecre tary o f Defense , and Aspin hadhoned and polished his Option Ctheories. It set the stage for reducingfor cutt ing back on the arme d forces.Even so, wh at happ ened nextaninstinctive, arbitrary cut of the defensebud get, followed by a Botto m-Upreview in search of a strategy to fit andjustify the cutwas astounding.

Defense cu ts had be gun in 1986, butthe federal deficit continue d, with no

po litically accep table way to re solve it.At a Budget Summit in 1990, theAdministration and Congress suspendedthe Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficitreduction act29 and in its place estab-lished reduction targets for specificcategories of spending.

The Budget summit p rojecteddefense cuts of $325 b illion b etwee nFY 1993 and FY 1997. However, theBush Administration ordered more cuts.Bushs final five-year budget, proposed

26 More Is the Pity at the

Pentagon, New York Times,

Feb. 9, 1994.27 David Halberstram. War in a

Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton,

and the Generals. Scribner,

2001, p. 168.

28 Colin Powell. My

American Journey.

Ballantine, 1996, p. 571.

29Gramm-Rudman-Hollings,

originally passed in 1985 and

modified in 1987, allocated

budget reductions auto-

matically by predetermined

formula in any year when the

government failed to meet a

pre-set deficit ceiling.

30 Decoding the New Defense

Budget, Air Force Association/

Air ForceMagazine special

report, April 19, 1993.

31 FY 1994 Defense Budget

Begins New Era, Department

of Defense, March 27, 1993.

32 FY 1994 Defense Budget

Begins New Era.

33 Les Aspin, Pentagon

briefing on the defense budget,

March 27, 1993.

34 Barton Gelman, Defense

Budget Treading Water,

Washington Post, March 28,

1993.

2 Bottom-Up

p

Cut back s Fr om t he Budget Summi t

Defense Budget Authority Projected for 19941998 (In Current $ Billions)

Budget Summit Baseline 1990 $1,523.3

Bush/Cheney, January 1993 $1,409.8

Clinton/Aspin, March 27, 1993 $1,278.1

The five-year budgets forecast by the Budget Summit in 1990 incorporated a substantial reduction for defense.

Bushs Base Force budgets were substantially lower. Then Clinton doubled the Bush cuts, taking the FYDP $245.2

billion below the Budget Summit baseline.

The biggest coldwar relic of all is

the excessive

size of American

forces. ...

Unless Mr.

Clinton finds the

courage to trim

defense, he will

be forced to

shortchange

domesticinvestment for

years to come.

New York Tim esed itor ial, Feb. 9,199426

8/6/2019 0203srf

11/54

One of the possibilities under consid-eration was a co ncep t called Win-Hold-Win,35 in which US forces would fullyprosecute one regional conflict andconduct a holding action on a secondfront. The second front wou ld not getfull attention until victory on the firstfront.

Two MRCsWin-Hold-Win was subjected to

with ering criticism, ridiculed as Win-Lose -Lose and Win-Hold-Oops. Withinweeks, it became an u nten able position.Aspin soon gave up on Win-Hold-Win,dec laring that After much discussion,weve come to th e conclusion that ourforces must b e able to fight and wintwo major regional conflicts, and nearlysimultaneously.36

An assump tion o f the Botto m-Upreview, Aspin said, was that we dontknow where trouble might break outfirst, or secon d. We can pre dict, how-ever, that wherever it does, we donthave sufficient forces there.37

The Bottom-Up Review 38 envisionedthat deploying US forces would respondto regional crisis in four stages:

Phase 1:Halt the In vasion. Minimizethe territory and critical facilities aninvader can capture. US forces deployrapidly to the th eater and ent er battleas quickly as possible.

Phase 2: Build u p US combat pow er inthe theater while reducing the enem ys.

Phase 3:Decisively defeat the enemyin large-scale air-land counteroffen-sive.

Phase 4:Provide for postwar stabil-ity.

Of th ese tasks, Aspin said, achievingan ability to stop an attack quickly isthe most critical element in dealingwith multiple contingencies.39 Air-power was obviously critical in thisformulation.

The Four-Option Fig LeafThe Joint Staff studied requ irements

for respon se to tw o major regionalconflicts (MRCs) simultaneously, oneMRC at a time, and Win-Hold-Win. Theirinitial conclusions are show n on theaccom panying Three Alternat iveschart.

When Aspin moved from Win-Hold-Win to two MRCs, he was cornered. Onthe o ne h and, he co uld not w alk awayfrom his budget cuts. On the otherhand, the two-MRC standard was theminimum he could get away with. Butthe reduced budget he had announcedin March was not enough to p ay for th etw o-MRC force.

In the formal publication of theBotto m-Up Review, this p roblem wascovered by a fig leaf of sorts. Simulta-neo us MRCs had bec ome nearlysimultaneous MRCs. (See chart, AFourth Choice.) There w ere now fouroptions instead of three for the forcesizing standard.41 A new level, 2 NearlySimultan eous MRCs Plus, had beenadded at the top. It was there, obvi-ously, for the purpose of being rejected.

The Botto m-Up Review w ould go, as

Aspin said, with the standard of 2 n ear-simultaneous MRCs. However, thenumber of Air Force fighter wingequivalents was now the same as forWin-Hold-Win. The pr eviously-calcu -

9

35 Michael R. Gordon, Cuts

Force Review of War

Strategies, New York Times,

May 30, 1993; Art Pine, US

May Limit Its Wars to One at a

Time, Los Angeles Times, May

31, 1993.

36 Les Aspin, Andrews AFB,

June 24, 1993.

37 Les Aspin, Fort McNair, June

16, 1993.

38 Les Aspin, Report on the

Bottom-Up Review, Oct. 15,

1993.

39 Aspin, Fort McNair, June 16,

1993.

40 Gordon, New York Times,

May 30, 1993. However, Air

ForceMagazine obtained

independent confirmation.

41 Les Aspin, Bottom-Up

Review briefing, Sept. 1, 1993.

The BUR Pon der s Thr ee Al t er nat iv es 40

(FWE = Fighter Wing Equivalent, MRC = Major Regional Conflict)

Sizing Standard Force Structure

2 simultaneous MRCs 24 FWE12 active Army div.

12 carriers

Win-Hold-Win 20 FWE10 active Army div.10 carriers

1 MRC at a time 16 FWE8 active Army div.8 carriers

Trying to match the budget cuts with a credible strategy, Aspin initially floated a concept called Win-Hold-Win, butit met with such derisive epithets as Win-Lose-Lose. He then shifted to the 2-MRC option.

8/6/2019 0203srf

12/54

lated req uirement for 24 wings hadbeen shifted to the new Plus level

Aspins Bottom-Up Review force was

basically the same as the Win-Hold-Winforce, excep t for the addition of on eactive and one reserve aircraft carrier.The Bottom -Up Review foun d 10carriers sufficient for two nearlysimultaneous MRCs, but added theoth ers for overseas presence .

Even with the cutting and re-labeling,the Bottom-Up Review failed to pro-duce a credible defense p rogram tomatch the arbitrary budget cuts. Aspinrevealed in Octo ber th at his budget(the Presidents target) was still $13billion short of covering the Bottom-Up

force.42

The Flaw That PersistedIt soon became ob vious to almost

everyone, that neither the budgets not theforces projected were sufficient to covertwo MRCs. Defense analyst Antho nyCordesman rep orted that, Senior officialsin the Comptrollers office of theDepartment of Defense and the Officeof Management and Budget privatelyadmit that the Bottom-Up Review is

unde rfunded b y at least $100 billion inoutlays over the p eriod thro ugh FY1999, or by a to tal of at least seven

percent to 10 percent.43

Senator Nunn pointed out thefundamental imbalance of requirementsand force s: Our military forces are notcapable of carrying out the t asksassumed in the Bottom-Up Review withthis kind of eroding defense budget , hesaid. We are e ither going to have t oadjust the resources or our expectation ofwh at military forces w ill be able to do,because the tw o are going in op positedirections.44

Rep. Ike Skelton (DMo.), chairmanof the House Armed Services subcom-

mittee on Military Forces and Person-ne l, said that simple th ird grade arith -metic showed that the Bottom-UpReview force could not cover two majorregional conflicts.45

Nevertheless, and despite the criticalflaws, the Botto m-Up Review c onfigura-tion and the two MRC force sizingstandard were th e basis for the defenseprogram through the 1990s.

10

42 Les Aspin, Report on the

Bottom-Up Review, Oct. 15,

1993, p 108.

43

Anthony Cordesman, USDefense Policy: Resources and

Capabilities, Woodrow Wilson

International Center, December

1993.

44 Sam Nunn, speech to

Senate, Oct. 21, 1993.

45 Ike Skelton, opening

statement at committee

hearing, Oct. 27, 1993.

A Four t h Choi ce and a Deci s i on

2 Nearly Simultaneous MRCs Plus 14 active FWE10 reserve FWE12 active Army divisions12 carriers

2 Nearly Simultaneous MRCs 13 active FWE7 reserve FWE10 active Army divisions12 carriers

Win-Hold-Win 13 active FWE7 reserve FWE10 active Army divisions10 carriers

1 MRC 10 active FWE6 reserve FWE8 active Army divisions8 carriers

Bottom-Up Review Force Decision 13 active FWE7 reserve FWE10 active Army divisions12 carriers (11 active)

In September 1993, the Bottom-Up Review reported four force-sizing alternatives instead of three. The new topcategory, 2 MRCs Plus, was an obvious throwaway, setting up 2 MRCs as a reasonable-looking choice. However, thenumbers associated with 2 MRCs had changed, and for the Air Force, were the same as for Win-Hold-Win. USMC

force structure constant in all options: 5 active brigades, 1 reserve division.

8/6/2019 0203srf

13/54

1and Clinto n Administrations. It was aUN-sponsored, US-led humanitarianmission to relive famine in Somalia.49

US Rangers an d a Delta Force cont in-gent were sent to Somalia in August 1993at the u rging of Jonath an Howe, retiredadmiral and former White House advisor,wh o was head o f the UN mission toMogadishu. The Pent agon objected, butthe White House approved th e dep loy-ment.50 This was a considerably moredangerous m ission, but Aspin denied arequest for supporting armor

On Oct. 34 , in the Black Hawk

Down incident, later the subject of aboo k and a movie, 18 Army Rangers andDelta Force tro ope rs died trying tocap ture minions o f a Somali warlord. ByDec. 2, US troops w ere acting asbodyguards for th at same warlord (nolonger d escribe d as a thu g in shiftingAdministration parlance) and flyinghim to a meet ing on Army aircraft.Public and Congressional outrage led toAspins dismissal in December.51

Shalikashvilis AdjustmentsArmy Gen. John M. Shalikashvili

replaced Powell as Chairman of theJoint Chiefs o f Staff Oct. 25, 1993. Hewas more amenable to Administrationthinking than Powell had be en.Shalikashvili went to some length , forexample, in disagreeing with theWeinberger Doctrine, declaring that hehad no r ight to p ut a sign on h is doorsaying, Im sor rywe only do the bigones.52

The new national security strategy,published by the White House in July1994 was ent itled A National SecurityStrategy o f Engagemen t an d Enlarge-

ment. Under this policy, the UnitedStates would engage actively abroadand try to en large the commu nity offree and open societies.

Shortly thereafter, the United Statesalmost went to war in Haiti. In thesummer of 1994, the Pentagon was toldto begin planning for an invasion ofHaiti. The purpose was to restorePresident Jean-Bert rand Aristide, whoseregime had been overthrown by ajunt a. There w as consider able dissent,

h o s e who wondered how the armedforces wou ld occup y themselves

after t he end of the Cold War got th eiranswer in the 1990s.

Hard on the hee ls of the Gulf War,Saddam Hussein began flexing themilitary pow er he had left, using itagainst dissidents in his own coun try.

On Apr il 10, 1991, to carry out UNmandates, the US established a no -flyzone (the future Northern Watch) in theairspace north of 36 degrees northlatitude. A correspond ing SouthernWatch no-fly zone was e stablished over

the area south of 32 degrees north latitudeon Aug. 26, 1992 .In addition , the Clinton Administration

lowered th e threshold of combat. It beganwith Aspin. During the President ialelection campaign of 1992, he drew adistinction betw een two schools ofmilitary employment. He describedthem as Limited Object ives vs. All orNothing.46 It was a deliberate chal-lenge to the Weinberger Doctrine,wh ich had set rigorous standards forcommitting US forces to combat.

Aspin cited the rise of the Limited

Objectives school, which he favored,and disparaged the All-or-Noth ingschool. This school says that if youarent ready to put th e pe dal to thefloor, don t start the engine , he said.People may not be willing to pay $250billion or even $200 billion a year for amilitary th at is not very useful. It maybe that to maintain a military for theextreme contingencies, it will benecessary to sho w that it is useful forthe lesser contingencies, too.47

Anot her believer in Limited Objectiveswas Madeleine Albr ight, initially

Clintons ambassador to the UN, laterSecre tary of State. Soon after the inaugu-ration , she asked Powell: Whats th epoint of having this superb military thatyoure always talking about if we c antuse it?48

During Clintons first year in office,the armed forces used force against Iraqsix times and once, disastrously, inSomalia.

Operation Restore Hope (Dec. 9,1992May 4, 1993) o verlappe d th e Bush

46 Les Aspin, Jewish Institute

for National Security Affairs

(JINSA), Sept 21, 1992.

47 House Armed Services

Committee, Sept. 21, 1992.

48 Colin Powell, My American

Journey, page 576.

49 Operation Restore Hope,

FAS Military Analysis Network,

March 4, 2000.

50 Mark Bowden. Black Hawk

Down. Grove/Atlantic, 1999, pp

90-96. Some 500 Somalis were

also killed.

51 John Correll, Roots of

Failure, Air ForceMagazine,

February 1994.

52 David Halberstram, War in a

Time of Peace, p. 390-391.

Engagement and Enl ar gement 3

t

8/6/2019 0203srf

14/54

even within Clintons own policy ranks,to th is move, but t he armed forcesprepared to carry out the operation.53

Land, sea, and air force s were po isedto strike on Sept. 19, but the conflictwas averted w hen the junta agreed, sixhours before H-hour, to Aristidesreturn.54

The Administration was not quitefinished dismantling the Weinbe rgerDoctrine. One o f its tenets w as that theUnited States would go to war only todefend its vital national intere sts. InFebr uary 1995, Secre tary of DefenseWilliam J. Per ry, who rep laced Aspin,said th e nation w ould also de fendinterests that were important but notnecessarily vital.55

There are three basic categories ofcases in which the United States mayuse its armed forces, Perry said. Thefirst involves cases in which US vitalinterests are th reatened. The secon dinvolves cases in which the UnitedStates has imp ortan t, but not vital,national interests at stake. The t hirdinvolves cases o f strictly humanitarianconcern.

In the imp ortan t-but -not -vital cat-egor y, he said, Options range fromusing US military assets for logisticalope rations t o e mploying US combatforces.

Shalikashvilis first national militarystrategy, pu blished in February 1995,was subtitled A Strategy of Flexible and

Selective Engagement.56

It reflectedthe national sec urity strategy o f En-gagement and Enlargemen t. There wasalso an ech o of Aspin s Limited Engage-ment beliefs. Shalikashvili recognizedthat On oc casion, US force s may bedirected to participate in peace en-forcement operations or other opera-tions wh ich stand in the gray zonebetw een p eace and w ar.

Non-War CombatThe n otion of Military Op erations

Other Than War gained con siderable

currency in the 1990s. MOOTWpron ounce d Mootw ah by its detrac-torsgrew out of the low-intensityconflict theor ies of the 1980s. It was re-labeled because the Joint Staff thought th elow-intensity con flict term was poten-tially offensive to host nation s wh eresuch con flict might occ ur.57

In 1995, the Joint doct rine w ritersdivided military operations up into w arand Mootwah, with a dividing linebet ween the two. However, MOOTW

might involve elements of bot h combatand no ncomb at ope rations.

Combat MOOTWthe curiousphen omenon of combat op erations thatwere not warincluded active c ombatope rations and emp loyment o f mostcom bat capab ilities. Confirming th esuspicion of Mootw ah critics, theseoperations were declared to be moresensitive to political considerations andwere subject to more restrictive rulesof engagement. Among the specifiedtypes of MOOTW operations werestrikes and raids.58 Mootw ah w as yetanother confirmation that the thresholdof combat had been lowered.

Betwe en 1991 and 1995, the numbe rof Air Force military op erations o the rthan w ar nearly doubled in co mparisonto the previous five years, and the levelof effort rose to 150,000 t o 170,000flying hours per year.59

Shalikashvilis second formal state-ment of the national defense strategy, in1997, was ent itled, Shap e, Respo nd,Prepare Now. Shape the internationalenvironment. Respon d to the fullspectru m of crises. Prepare now for anuncertain future.

He took his cue from ClintonsNational Security Strategy for a NewCentury, May 1997, which also referredto shap ing, respon ding, and p reparing.Shalikashvili acknowledged the forcestructure proposed that year by theQuadr enn ial Defense Review as the

Total Force req uired to carry out thePresident s 1997 National Secu rityStrategy and this supporting militarystrategy at prudent risk.

Military action continued at a briskclip through the Clinton years. Therewere two main arenas for conflict: theformer Yugoslavia and Iraq.

Bosnia

In June 1991, civil war broke out inwh at used t o b e Yugoslavia.60 It was inthe back yard of Europ e and NATO, butthe Europe ans could n ot h andle it. The

United States was inexorably drawn in.In Sept ember 1991, the UnitedNations orde red an arms embargo in allYugoslavia, and in October 1992, estab-lished a no-fly zone in the airspace ofBosnia-Herzegovina. (With OperationDeny Flight in April 1993, NATO beganto enforce th e n o-fly zone. The op erationwould run until December 1995. It wasthe first of a long string of actions in th eformer Yugoslavia that would culminatewith Air War Over Serbia in 1999.)

12

53 David Halberstram, War in

a Time of Peace, p. 278-282.

54 Colin Powell, My American

Journey, p. 598-602.

55 William J. Perry, Hierarchy

of Interests in Annual Report

to the President and the

Congress, February 1995.

56 Gen. John M. Shalikashvili,

National Military Strategy of

the United States, February

1995.

57 John Correll, The Murky

Edges of Mootwah, Air ForceMagazine, July 1996.

58 Joint Pub 3-07, Joint

Doctrine for Military

Operations Other Than War,

June 16, 1995.

59 Alan Vick et al. Preparing

the US Air Force for Military

Operations Other Than War.

RAND, 1997.

60Bosnia Fact Sheet:

Chronology of the Balkan

Conflict, US State

Department, Dec. 6, 1995;

Operation Deny Flight fact

sheet, Allied Forces Southern

Europe, undated.

8/6/2019 0203srf

15/54

In the 1992 US presidential electioncampaign, candidate Clinton criticizedPresident Bush for not responding morestrongly to the Bosnia crisis.61

In its last m ont hs, the Bush Adminis-tration explored an app roach calledLift and Strike, i.e., lift the armsembargo and use air strikes against Serbs.The Europ eans rejected it. Clinton raisedthe idea again in 1994, but the Europeans,who had troops on th e ground there, stilltook a dim view of those who wanted towage w ar from high altitude. MalcomRifkind, the British de fense m inister, said,Those w ho call for action by th e w orldmust match words [by] deeds and thatdoe snt include just a few aircraft.62

By 1995, the Serbs were bold in theiraggression, taking UN hostages andoverrunning safe areas at will. Whenairpower was used, it was in a severelylimited fashion, with restrictive rules ofengagement and tight controls from UNofficials on the ground . Then , in August1995, an artillery attack on an openmarket in Sarajevo p romp ted NATO toact with determination.

Operation Deliber ate Force , Aug. 30-Sep t. 14, included some artiller y, but itwas mostly airpower. For three weeks,the Serbs w atched th eir military powerbeing destroyed before th eir eyesbefore deciding they wou ld rather talkthan fight.

As repo rter John Tirpak not ed, Ittook just 3,515 NATO air sort iesabout

a days work in the 1991 Gulf Wartoget the Serbs to negotiate in earnest.63

Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke ,special US nego tiator in t he Balkans andprimary architect of the Dayton p eaceaccord s, said th at Deliberate Forcewas the primary factor in bringing theSerbs to th e pe ace table.

In November 1995, Clinton decidedto send US troops t o Bosnia, saying that,Our Joint Chiefs of Staff have con -cluded th at this mission shouldandwilltake about one year.64

Much w as made at the time of the

assurance that the troops would be outof Bosnia in a year. However, thewithdrawal date was extended again andagain and even tually dec lared to beindefinite. The lack of an exit st rategybecame a an issue for Clintons criticsin Congress.

Kosovo

In 1998, the Yugoslav civil war spre adto the southern province of Bosnia,whose independent status had been

revoked in 1989 by the Serb regime inBelgrade. In Februar y 1999, the w arringfactions met for peace talks at Ram-bouillet, France, but could not reachagreement. By March, the UnitedNations estimated that the number ofdisplaced per sonsintern al refugeesin Kosovo at 240,000, more than atenth of the population of the prov-ince.65

NATO Op eration Allied Force beganMarch 24 as a limited effort to breakthe will of Serb leader SlobodanMilosevic. The ope ning p hase w asconducted with hesitation, whicheliminated any strategic value thatmight have been obtained from shockand surprise.

In the first three weeks, aircrewsflew an average of only 84 strike sortiesa day. The operation escalated slowly.Politicians and lawyers reviewed andvoted on everything, including targets.Predictably, Milosevic did not cave in aspromp tly as anticipated.66

The air campaign w as a month oldbefore the t arget list was exp anded toprodu ce strategic results. Once thathappened, though, airpower took apun ishing toll on th e Serb regimeandcontrary to the prediction of thecritics of airpowerMilosevic and theSerb parliament agreed to NATOster ms in early June .

Despite claims that would be madelater by advocates of ground warfare,

Operation Allied Force w as almostcompletely an airpower action. Amongthose w ho acknow ledged it was JohnKeegan, the eminent British militaryhistorian, wh o had often be en a hardcritic of airpower.

Keegan said that his earlier views hadbeen wron g and that June 3, 1999,marked a turning point in historywh en when the capitulation o f Presi-dent Milosevic proved that a war canbe w on b y airpow er alone.67

Nineteen NATO nations sent air-craft to take part in the operation, but

the US Air Force flew the greatershare of th e mission s. For t he AirForce, the o pe ration in Kosovo wasthe r ough e quivalent o f a majorthe ater co nflict. It took almost h alf ofthe c ombat force, even though thesortie level was we ll below that ofth e Gu lf War. By th e e nd of th e firstmonth, it was running short of pre-ferred munitions and had strippedstateside bases of spare parts andexperienced aircrews.

13

61 Stanley Sloan, The United

States and the Use of Force in

the Post-Cold War World,

Congressional Research

Service report, July 20, 1994.

62 David Halberstram, War in a

Time of Peace, p. 285.

63 John A. Tirpak, Deliberate

Force, Air ForceMagazine,

October 1997; Operation

Deliberate Force, FAS Military

Analysis Network, April 5,

1999.

64 Bill Clinton, Address to the

Nation, Nov. 27, 1995.

65 Rebecca Grant, The Kosovo

Campaign: Aerospace Power

Made It Work, Air Force

Association, September 1999.

66 John Correll, Assumptions

Fall in Kosovo, Air Force

Magazine, June 1999; Correll,

Airpower and Its Critics, Air

ForceMagazine, July 1999.

67 John Keegan, Please Mr.

Blair, Never Take Such a Risk

Again, London Daily

Telegraph, June 6, 1999.

8/6/2019 0203srf

16/54

When the operation ended after 11wee ks, the Air Force neede d a per iod ofreconstitution in wh ich to recover.

Iraq

Soon after the Gulf War, SaddamHussein resumed h is recalcitrance. Heprovoked a major crisis in 1997 byordering all American inspec tors on theUN team out of the coun try, demandingthat the UN set a timetable to lift itssanctions against Iraq, an excludingfrom inspe ction palaces and o fficialresidences, some of the m several

square miles in size.The United States issued one direwarning after another and talked ofAmerican-led bombardment, butobjectives were exp ressed in hedgedter ms, such as substantially reduc e ordelay Iraqs capability to develop anduse non -conventional weapo ns.69

In Februar y 1998, discussing airstrikes against Iraq, Albright by th enSecretary of Statesaid that, We aretalking about using military force , butwe are no t talking abou t w ar. That is animportant distinction.70

In Octobe r 1998, Iraq ende d allcoop eration with the UN inspectors.For once, even eight of the Arab statesblamed Saddam Hussein for the worsen-ing crisis, but President Clinton hadtrou ble p ulling th e tr igger. On Nov. 14,with B-52 bomb ers already in th e air, heaborted the strikes on the strength ofan unseen letter from Saddam to KofiAnnan. Within hours, the White Housediscovered the letter had more h olesthan Swiss cheese, rescheduled the

strikes, and the n aborte d them a secondtime wh en Saddam submitted a revisedletter. The provocations soon re-sumed.71

The closest thing to a sustained effortwas Op erat ion Desert Fox , Dec. 16-19,1998. It consisted of 650 air sorties andthe firing of 400 c ruise missiles, but itwas terminated after 70 hours, in p artbecause bombing Muslim Iraq duringthe holy month of Ramadan wou ld beprofound ly offensive.

The UN Special Commission(UNSCOM) inspection team left Iraq

ahead of the bombing. In December1999, the UN replaced it withUNMOVIC, the UN Monitoring Verifica-tion and Inspection Commission.Whereas UNSCOM had u sed p rofession-als on loan from western governm ents,UNMOVIC was the creat ure of the UNbur eaucracy. Iraqs friends on theSecu rity Counc il, notably France andRussia, blocked strong leadership forthe team. But even so, Iraq never letUNMOVIC into the country, and re-jected various inspection prop osals.72

Although the no-fly zone operations

continued, Iraq, supported by Russia,France, and the Arab world, pushed toloosen or eliminate eco nomic sanctionsand other controls imposed on it.73

... All of wh ich helped set up thelarger crisis with Iraq, which wouldcome in 2002.

14

68 Abridged from Anthony H.

Cordesman, Iraqs Milit ary

Capabilities in 2002, CSIS,

September 2002.

69 Why Saddam Yawns,

Richmond Times Dispatch,

Feb. 13, 1998; Barton Gellman

and Edward Walsh, President

Narrows Goals for Airstrikes,

Washington Post, Feb. 7, 1998.

70 Lawrence F. Kaplan, How to

Send a Message: Use AT&T,

Not USAF, Wall Street Journal,

Dec. 23, 1998.

71 John Correll, Lessons in

Limited Force, Air Force

Magazine, February 1999.

72 Key Events in UN WeaponsInspections in Iraq,

Associated Press, Sept. 17,

2002; Gary Milhollin and Kelly

Motz, Iraq: The Snare of

Inspections, Commentary,

October 2002; Barbara

Crossette, France Rejects UN

Nominee for Iraq Inspection

Panel, New York Times, Jan.

18, 2000; Iraq Says UN Plan

to Resume Arms Inspections is

a No-Go, CNN.com, April 16,

2000.

73 Edith M. Lederer, Iraq

Chipping Away at Sanctions,

New York Times, Nov. 14,

2000.

Total Sorties

Percent of Total US Sorties

Offensive Strike Sorties

Sorties Per Day

Percent of Total MissionsPrecision Guided

US Ai r power in Reg iona l Con f l i c t s 68

Desert Storm Serbia/Kosovo Afghanistan

118,700 37,50038,000 29,00038,000

85% 60% 92%

41,300 10,80814,006 17,500

2,800 200, climbing to 2,000 25, climbing to 200

78 % 35% 56%

Operation Allied Force in the Balkans was a smaller conflict than the Gulf War. Even so, the Air Force used about halfof its combat force in the air war over Serbia, and when it was over, needed time to recover and reconstitute.

8/6/2019 0203srf

17/54

The Air Force rep orte d that, Wevereduced o ur per sonnel by one-third,fighte r and ICBM force s by almost o ne-half, and th e bo mber force b y two-thirds. Our bu dget is down b y approxi-mately 40 p ercen t from its Cold Warhigh.

In 1995, just to supp ort p eaceop erations in Iraq and Bosnia, the AirForce kep t the equivalent o f twofighter w ings deployed, supp orted bytwo tanker squadrons and a largepor tion of the surveillance and elec-tronic comb at assets.76

One deployment followed anoth er, andthere was no end in sight. Eventually, theAir Force concluded that th ese dep loy-ments were going to be the rule, not theexception, and decided to recon figure itsope rational forces into an expeditionarymode . This, it was h oped, wou ld at leastprovide some stability and predictabilityfor those dep loying.

Between 1995 and 1997, four exp eri-men tal Air Exp editionar y Task Forcesdep loyed to Bahrain, Jordan , and Qatar.The first regular Air and Space Expe di-tionary Force cycle began Oc tober

1999. (Exp editionary Air and SpaceForce refers to the conc ept of opera-tions. Air an d Space Exp editionaryForce refers to the units that deploy.)

The 15-month rotation cycle wasdivided into five periods of threemon ths each. Two of th e 10 AEFs werevulnerable for dep loyment during eachthree-month cycle. Two AEFS were seenas adequate to handle steady statepeacetime deployments. Wartime wouldtake more.77

In 1995, for the first time in almost 50years, the nation s allocation for d e-

fense slipped below 4.0 percent of theGross Domestic Product. The defenseshare of the federal budget kept falling.

The high-water mark of the Reaganera defense budgets was in 1985.Reductions began the next year, alongwith clamor for a peace dividend.Subtracting the projected defensebudgets for subsequent years from astraight line pro jection of the 1985defense budget yielded a cumulativedifference sometimes known as the

15h e most famous part of the Bottom-Up Review w as the stipulation that

US armed forces should be able to fighttwo major regional conflicts, almostsimultaneously.

This is often re ferred to as th e two-MRC strategy, bu t that is wron g. Two-MRC was a force sizing standard. Thestrategy w as Engagemen t and Enlarge-ment.

From the beginning, though, theClinton defense budgets were insuffi-cient to cover two MRCs. Other require-ments, including maintenance of

equipment and facilities, wasunde rfunded as well.The Administration was un willing to

spend more o n defense. At th e sametime, the Engagement and Enlargementstrategy cut off the option of reduc ingmilitary obligations and requirements.Instead, there was an increase in the p aceof US military op erat ions. Thus, thechronic defense imbalances of the 1990swere locked in. Resources and require-ments were headed in opposite directions.

We have from the very beginning ofthe Bottom-Up Review made no secret

of the fact that the Air Force did nothave the force structure required in theBottom-Up Review, Gen. Ronald R.Fogleman, Air Force Chief of Staff, toldCongress in 1996.74

The Base Force reduct ionsdeep -ened by the Bottom-Up Reviewwerebased in part o n assumptions that USforces wou ld be able to w ithdraw fromoverseas. They had done so, but thecommitments abroad were moredemanding than ever.

By 1995, for exam ple , Air Forcepersonnel strength was down by one-

third across the force and b y 50 per-cen t over seas. Yet t he numbe r of AirForce peop le on temporary duty overseaswas up nearly four-fold since the fall ofthe Berlin Wall.75

Almost 50 percen t of the active dutyfighter forces w ere c ontinuou slydeployed overseas. For people assignedto many w eapon s and sp ecialities,dep loyments far exc eeded the AirForces goal of no more than 120 dayspe r year.

74 Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman,

House National Security

Committee, March 13, 1996.

75 Air Force Issues Book, 1995.

76 Alan Vick et al, Preparing

the US Air Force for Military

Operations Other Than War,

RAND, 1997.

77 John Correll, The EAF in

Peace and War, Air Force

Magazine, July 2002.

The Imbal ance Devel opsand Wor sens

4

t

8/6/2019 0203srf

18/54

peace dividendof about $2.1 tr il-lion..78

Reviews and Continuing ReductionsThe 1990s w ere t he Golden Age of

defense reviews. The Bott om-Up Reviewof 1993 was followed by the Commis-sion on Roles and Missions, the DeepAttack Weapons Mix Study, and others.The search for answers co ntinued in1997 with the Quadrennial DefenseReview, with the National DefensePanel Review waiting on deck .

The Quadrennial Defense Review wasmandated by th e defense authorizationbill for FY 1997 and chartered toexamine defense needs from 1997 to2015. The review w as carried out by theDepartment of Defense.

Among th e main results were the se:79

It re-validated the two-MRC force-sizing standard, but changed the MRCterminology to MTW (major theaterwar).Despite assurances th at it was

strategy driven, the Quadrenn ialDefense Review w as essent ially yetanother reduction exercise. It noted achron ic migration o f funds fromprocurement to operations and support,but said th at increased funding fordefense was n ot likely,It prop osed more force c uts. In

1997, combined active d uty strengthstood at 1.45 million, down from 2.2million in 1985. The QDR pro jected a

further redu ction to 1.36 million b y2003.Boot s on the Ground force

structurethe numb er o f active Armydivisions and Marine ExpeditionaryForce sas well as aircraft carrier s andcarrier attack wings survived the QDRintact. Howe ver, one active d uty Air

Force fighter wing was transferred tothe Air National Guard, and reser ve airdefense squadrons were cut.

s Several aircraft p rograms w ere alsocu t: the Air Force s F-22 fighter from438 aircraft to 339, E-8 Joint STARSaircraft from 19 t o 13 , and the Navys F/A-18E/F from 1,000 to 548.

Congress, having chartered theQuadrennial Defense Review, promptlychartered a secon d group, workingindepe nden tly, to give a second opin-ion. This group , the National DefensePanel, completed its work sevenmonth s after th e Quadren nial DefenseReview. It did not depart from the QDRin any significant respect.80

The NDP is best remembered for itsemphasis on transformation, featured inthe title of its rep ort , TransformingDefense. The ter m w as in u se e arlierthe QDR, for example, had a chapter ontransformingbut transformation tookroot with the National Defense Panel. Itwas thereafter a watchword in thePentagon . Four years later, the newBush Administration would make it acentral cause.

The National Defense Panel said thattransformation w ould take an additional$5 b illion to $10 b illion a year. Other-wise, transformation was possible onlyby reducing op erations tempo, cancel-ing acquisition programs, and reducingforce structure and end strength .

The Budget Bottoms OutIn 1998, the defense budget finallybottom ed ou t at $258.6 billion (or,adjusted for inflation, $294.6 b illion inconstant FY 2003 dollars).81 That was36.2 percent below the Reagan erape ak in 1985. Paying for th e Kosovo airoperation generated a real increase in the

16

78 Tamar Mehuron, The Peace

Dividend: $2 Trilli on, Air Force

Magazine, November 1999.

79 Report of the Quadrennial

Defense Review, May 1997.

80 Transforming Defense:

National Security in the 21st

Century, National Defense

Panel report, December 1997.

81 Donald Rumsfeld, 2002

Annual Report, DOD.

QDR Per so nn el Cut s

Active Duty Reserve Civilian

Air Force 26,900 700 18,300

Army 15,000 45,000 33,700

Navy 18,000 4,100 8,400

Marine Corps 1,800 4,200 400

Total 61,700 54,000 60,800

The Air Force active duty force bore the brunt of the QDR force structure reductions and also took the heaviest

personnel cutsabout 44 percent of the total for the four services.

8/6/2019 0203srf

19/54

1999 program. Before that, the defensebudget had fallen every year for 13straight years.83

The armed forces were short of

mone y and p eop le, and it showed innumerou s dimensions. New words, suchas Optempo (operations tem po) andPerstemp o (per sonnel temp o) enteredthe military lexicon to d escribe thepressure and pace of operations. Highdemand/ low de nsity referred tosystems that were needed everywherebut th at were in short sup ply.

Jacques Gansler, Undersec retar y ofDefense for Acquisition & Tech no logy,said in August 1998 that, We aretrapped in a death spiral. The requ ire-ment to maintain our aging equipment

is costing us m ore e ach year. ... But w emust keep the equipment in repair tomaintain readiness. It d rains ... re-sources we sho uld be app lying tomodernization. ... So we stretch out ourreplacement sche dules to ridiculouslengths and reduce th e quantities of thenew equipment we purchaseraisingtheir costs and still further delayingmodern ization. Comp ounding thisproblem is the increased operationstemp o ... wh ich more rapidly wears outthe o ld equipment .84

The Congressional Budget Office said

in Septe mber 2000 that it wou ld takean additional $51 billion a year (in 2000dollars) to keep defense forces in asteady statethat is, to keep them fromfalling any further beh ind.85

To keep their existing quality at thepre sent bud get levels, CBO said, theservices wou ld have to be cut b y 25percenta reduction on the order oftwo act ive Army divisions, three carrierbattle groups, and three active duty AirForce wings.

More than half of the shortfall wasmone y needed to recapitalize the force,making up for a 10-year period inwhich the Pentagon repeatedly put off

replacing aircraft and other systems.Other estimates of the shortfall werehigher, in the range of $100 billion.86

Buildings, runways, and other facili-ties at military installations w ere agingand deteriorating. Eventually, thebacklog in maintenance work atmilitary bases reache d $60 billion. AirCombat Command ne eded $70 millionjust for roof repairs.87

For the Air Force, readiness and anaging fleet were special problems. Gen.Michael E. Ryan, Air Forc e Chie f of Staff,told Congress in Septembe r 200088 that

overall USAF readiness w as dow n 23perce nt since 1996; and th at statesidereadiness was down 29 percent since1996. Mission capable rates for AirForce aircraft h ad declined mo re th an10 percentage points since 1991.

The average age of the USAF aircraftfleet w as almost 22 years. In 15 years,the average age w ould be 30 years,even if the Air Force executed everymodernization program then on thebooks, Ryan said.

That was largely the result of aprocurem ent ho liday, cited by th e

Quadre nn ial Defense Review, in w hichforce modernization was postponedyear after year. By 1997, the Depart-ment of Defense was spending 63 percentless on procurement than it did duringthe Co ld War. The Air Force bough tcomparatively few aircraft in the 1990s(see chart) and almost half of those itdid buy were trainers.

Air Force readiness bottomed out at65 percent in February 2001.89

In testimony to the to th e Senate

17

82Air ForceMagazine annual

USAF Almanac issues; Office of

Secretary of Defense/P&R,

October 2002.

83 Robert S. Dudney, Defense

Spending: Illusions and

Realities, Air ForceMagazine,

April 2000.

84Robert B. Zoellick, CSIS,

testimony to Senate Budget

Committee, Feb. 4, 1999.

85 CBO, Budgeting for

Defense: Maintaining Todays

Forces, Sept. 14, 2000.

86 Peters Says Defense Needs

$80 Billion to $100 Billion Per

Year Boost, Air Force

Magazine, December 2000;

Daniel Gour and Jeffrey M.

Ranney. Averting the Defense

Train Wreck in the New

Millennium. CSIS, 1999.

87 George Cahlink, Under the

Rubble, Air ForceMagazine,

November 2002.

88 Gen. Michael E. Ryan,

statement to Senate Armed

Services Committee, Sept. 27,

2000.

89 Report of Secretary of the Air

Force in Rumsfelds Annual

Report, 2002.

Ai r For ce Manpower Tr ends

Fiscal Year End Strength in Thousands82

FY90 FY93 FY96 FY01 FY03

Active Duty Force 535 444 389 354 35

Air National Guard 117 117 110 109 107

AF Reserve Command 81 81 74 74 74

Direct Hire Civilians 238 193 176 155 150

With the active duty force 34 percent below the 1990 level, the Air Force puts greater reliance on the Guard andReserve, but these forces have taken reductions as well. There are also problems with the civilian force, which was

cut deeply.

8/6/2019 0203srf

20/54

App rop riations Comm ittee, May 11,1999, Secret ary o f Defense William S.Cohen said that,We simply cannotcarry out the missions we have withthe budget th at we h ave; there is a

mismatch. We have more to do and lessto do it with, and so that it is starting toshow in wear and tearwear and tearon people, wear and tear on equipment.... Were e ither going to have to havefewer missions or more p eop le, but w ecannot continue the kind of pace thatwe have. 90

President Clinton, surveying the trendsof the 1990s, had a different opinion:

I have kept my pledge to maintain andmodern ize our defense capabilities. We

18

90 Cohens Choice: Cut

Deployments or Add Forces,

box in Otto Kreisher, Hawleys

Warning, Air ForceMagazine,

July 1999.

91 Bill Clinton, Between Hope

and History: Meeting Americas

Challenges for the 21st

Century, Times Books, 1996.

Ai r Fo r ce Ai r c r af t Pr ocu r emen t

FY85 FY86 FY87 FY88 FY89 FY90 FY91 Avg Buy/YearFY8591

192 228 222 222 216 186 144 201

34 48 0 0 2 2 2 13

4 6 3 0 0 0 0 28 12 8 0 0 0 0 4

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

25 8 0 6 1 20 5 9

8 16 21 2 4 4 0 8

10 0 0 0 1 14 28 8

5 12 5 7 19 31 4 12

286 330 259 237 243 257 183 256

3% 0% 0% 0% 0% 5% 15% 3%

FY92 FY93 FY94 FY95 FY96 FY97 FY98 FY99 FY00 FY01 Avg Buy/Year

FY9201

51 24 12 0 12 12 8 3 15 19 16

1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

0 2 2 2 2 16 17 9 8 8 7

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0

11 8 0 0 5 5 5 4 2 2 4

4 6 6 6 8 8 9 13 15 12 9

72 78 68 35 3 15 22 22 29 34 38

6 10 0 0 0 10 1 4 1 0 3

145 132 88 43 30 66 62 55 70 77 77

50% 59% 77% 81% 10% 23% 35% 40% 41% 44% 49%

completed a comprehensive review ofour m ilitary needs for the future andrestructured our forces. Even as the sizeof our forces decreased, their capabili-ties, readiness, and qualitative edge h ave

increased.91

Fighter/Attack

Bomber

C2ISRTanker

Airlift-Special

Intratheater

Intertheater

Trainer

Other

Total

Percent Trainers

Fighter/Attack

Bomber

C2ISR

Tanker

Airlift-Special

Intratheater

Intertheater

Trainer

Other

Total

Percent Trainers

Source: AF/XPX July 2002

8/6/2019 0203srf

21/54

8/6/2019 0203srf

22/54

The Sor t ie-t o-Tar get Rat io 100

World War II Vietnam Gulf War Serbia

(1943) (1970) (1991) (1999)

Targets Destroyed 1 1 2 16

Sorties Required 1,000 (B-17) 30 (F-4) 1 (F-117) 1 (B-2)

Bombs Required 9,000 176 2 16

One o f the o utcomes of this evolvingcapability was parallel warfare: thecapability to hit all of the important

targets at once rather than serially.101

With parallel warfare, it all goesdow n at once , an Air Force b riefingexplained. The enemy h as no chanceto adjust, adapt, or mount a counterof-fensive. Every step in the recovery treeis obstructed. Even if the decision-maker survives, he cant know theextent of the damage, cant co ordinatea response, cant move repair teams.The ene my is paralyzed.102

A related concep t, possibly even moreimpor tant, was effects based op era-tions.103

In days gone b y, it was commo nlyagreed that the way to fight a war wasto destroy the enemys army andoccup y his capital. The ce nterp iece ofthe strategy was the c lash of onemassed force w ith anoth er.

It was a bloody enterp rise, and th ewinne r might take higher c asualtiesthan the loser, as Ulysses S. Grant did inthe Wildern ess and at Cold Harbor.Nevertheless, the attrition model ofwarfare p revailed into th e 20 th century.But destruc tion of the enemy was nevermore than t he means to a strategic end ,

not an end in itself..The Revolution in Military affairsintroduced the possibility of effects-based op erations, in w hich succe ss inarmed conflict is measured by results,not b y destruction. Did the ope rationcomp el a po sitive p olitical outcome?Did it yield the desired strategic results?Did our will prevail over that of theadversary?

It is conceivable that in some cases,the strategic objective will still be to

destroy the en emys army and oc cup yhis cap ital. Often, the goal is somet hingelse. Keep enemy armor from m assing.

Halt an invasion. Take away the enemysability to command and con trol his forces,as we did within hours at the beginning ofthe Gulf War. In ot he r instances, it may besufficient to inh ibit, intimidate, or de terthe enemy.

New Way of WarIn 1996 , Fogleman said that we are

on the verge of a new American w ay ofwar.104 The United States had tradition-ally pursued a wartime strategy ofattrition and annih ilation that reliedon large forces employing mass, con-

centration, and firepowe r to attritenemy forces and defeat them in w hatmany times became costly bust successfulbattles.

Techno logy and circumstances wereleading to un ique military advantages,part icularly in airpow er, that could beemp loyed to c ompe l an adversary todo our will at the least cost to theUnited States in lives and re sources.

America has not only the op por tu-nity but th e obligation to transitionfrom a con cep t of w arfare that placestho usands of young Amer icans at risk in

br ute , force-on-force con flicts t o aconc ept that leverages our militarycapabilities to ach ieve US objectives byapplying what I like to refer to as anasymmetric force strategy, Foglemansaid.

In future conflicts, we might directlyattack enemy strategic and tacticalcenters of gravity, in short, an enemyscapability to effectively wage war.

Among th e factors making th e newAmerican way of war po ssible are the

20

100 Adapted from Brig. Gen.

David A. Deptula, Effects-

Based Operations, Aerospace

Education Foundation, 2001.

101 Deptula, Effects-Based

Operations.

102 The Time Value of War,

AF/XOX briefing, January

1992.

103 Deptula, Effects-Based

Operations.

104 Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman,

Airpower and the American

Way of War, Air Force

Association Symposium, Feb.

13, 1996; John Correll, The

New American Way of War, Air

ForceMagazine, April 1996

It is no longer a question of how many sorties are required to destroy one target but rather how many targets a single

aircraft can destroy on one sortie. Average accuracy in World War II was 3,300 feet. By the 1990s, accuracy was

within 10 feet. The protection of stealth further reduced the number of airplanes needed to fly the mission.

8/6/2019 0203srf

23/54

8/6/2019 0203srf

24/54

land combataided immeasurably bythe air campaignachieved every goaland victory.108

The Associat ion of th e US Army saidthe same th ing: As the leading elemen tof th e [Gulf War] coalition, the UnitedStates Army d ecisively de feated thefourth largest field army in the w orld. ...It was the land force that pro vided th eessent ial muscle t o lead Amer icascoalition partn ers in the liberation ofKuwait, the decisive defeat of the Iraqiarmy, and the restoration of stability inthe Persian Gulf.109

In fact, the air campaign in the Gulfleft the Iraqi force dem oralized, reeling,and degraded by about 50 percent fromcasualties and d esert ions. Coalitionground forces, supp orted b y airpower,needed only 100 hours to chase thestaggering Iraqis out o f Kuw ait in whatwas dubbed The Moth er of All Retreats.

After Op eration Allied Force in theBalkans, Lt. Gen. John W. Hendrix,comm ander of the US Army Fifth Corp sand t he commander of the Task ForceHawk helicopter contingent during theoperation, said that,The reason SlobodanMilosevic finally caved ina primaryreason was th e p ressure o f US Armyground forces in Albania.

Supp orting that claim in an odd w aywas Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, whocommanded Op eration Allied Force .110 Atone p oint, Clark had declared that TheUS Air Force saved me, and it saved

NATO. He to ld t heNew York Tim es that,What did the trick was the accuracy ofthe p recision weapons, the avoidance oflosses, and the increasing destruction ofthe Serb forces.

But in h is memoir,Waging ModernWar, published in May 2001, Clark founda different reason for the Serb surrender.Planning and prep arations for groundintervention were w ell underway by theend of the campaign, and I am convincedthat th is, in particu lar, pu shed Milosevicto concede, Clark said.111

In fact, airpow er w as the only military

force engaged in the 78-day operation th atended with the Serb surrender. The th reatof a land offensive had noth ing to do withit. NATO had no plans to invade Serb ia. Aland invasion could not have been pulledoff for anot her six month s, if then.

Ope ration Enduring Freedom air strikesin Afghanistan began Oct. 7, 2001.Within the month , an outcr y arose thatthe w ar was being lost and airpowercouldnt get the job done.

The New Republic, cur iously aspiring

to military expertise, editorialized thatAirpower certainly has a rather impres-sive record of failure.112

Writing in th e Washin gton Post,William Kristo l said, We pr obablycannot win the war in Afghanistanwithou t ground troops. Bombingveryheavy bombingwasnt en ough todefeat Saddam in 1991, and only thethreat (finally) of ground troops broughtMilosevic to yield in 1999.113 Withinnine days of Kristols wr iting, airpow er,working with ground spotters, had theTaliban o n th e run in Afghanistan.

Fareed Zakaria, editor ofNewsweekInternational, got it right: Over the lastdecade, every time the United States hasengaged in a strategic bombing cam-paign it has achieved its goalsthink ofthe Persian Gulf War, the Bosnian aircampaign (which per suaded Milosevicto sign the Dayton accords), Kosovo, andAfghanistan. And after e ach war, influen-tial expe rts and jour nalists have emph a-sized th at the central lesson of theoperation is ... air power alone doe sntwork. With the Taliban in ru ins andAmerican allies in control of threequarter s of Afghanistan, expect to starthearing arguments about how ourvictor y had little to do w ith bom bing.114

The Dimming of VisionOpposition to airpower and to the

Revolution in Military Affairs showedup in official settings as well. In July

1996, the Joint Ch iefs of Staff publishedJoint Vision 2010, their concept forhow the armed forces would evolve. Itwas supp lanted in June 2000 by JointVision 2020. The differen ce in th e twodocum ents show s hard-nosed Pentagonpolitics, working to roll back theRevolution in Military Affairs.

The first Joint Vision signed up to t heRMA. It said t hat we shou ld be increas-ingly able to accomplish the effects ofmassthe necessary concentration ofcombat p owe r at the dec isive time andplacewith less need to mass forces

physically than in the past.That statement and o ther s in JointVision 2010 were seen as threateningto the Army, whose stock in trade is theph ysical massing o f forces. However,the Army wields enorm ous strength inthe inner circles of th e Pentagon. Thatwas made obvious w hen Joint Vision2020 appeared, four years later, in June2000.

The RMA concepts had vanishedwithou t a trace. In their place w ere

22

108 Letter to the editor,

Washington PostNov. 7,

1994.

109 Desert Victory: The US

Army in the Gulf, Institute for

Land Warfare, Association of

the US Army, February 2001.

110 Rebecca Grant, Wesley

Clarks War, Air Force

Magazine, September 2001.

111 Gen. Wesley K. Clark,

Waging Modern War, p. 425.

112 Hit the Ground, New

Republic, Nov. 19, 2001.113 William Kristol, The

Wrong Strategy, Washington

Post, Oct. 30, 2001.

114 Fareed Zakaria, Face the

Facts: Bombing Works,

Newsweek, Dec. 3, 2001.

8/6/2019 0203srf

25/54

23

assertions about the rapid massing offorces. In addition , Joint Vision 2020said th at the p resence o r anticipatedpresenc e of a dec isive force might we llcause an enemy to surrender.

That sounds very much like th e claimof Army officials and ent husiasts th at itwas the presence on an unengagedArmy grou nd force in Albania, not the11-week air campaign, that caused theSerbs to surre nde r to NATO in 1999.

The Seco nd Comin g o f Mass 115

Joint Vis ion 201 0

Instead of relying on massed forces andsequential operations, we will achievemassed effects in other ways.

With precision targeting and longerrange systems, commanders canachieve the necessary destruction orsuppression of enemy forces with fewersystems, thereby reducing the need fortime-consuming and risky massing ofpeople and equipment.

We should be increasingly able toaccomplish the effects of massthenecessary concentration of combatpower at the decisive time and placewith less need to mass forces physically

than in the past.

Joint Vis ion 202 0

Overseas USbased units will massforces or effects directly to the opera-tional theater.

The capability to rapidly mass force orforces and the effects of dispersedforces allow the joint force commanderto establish control of the battlespace atthe proper time and place.

Beyond the actual physical presence ofthe force, dominant maneuver creates animpact in the minds of opponents and oth-ers in the operational area. ... In a conflict,for example, the presence or anticipated

presence of a decisive force might wellcause an enemy to surrender after mini-mal resistance.

Completely purged from Joint Vision 2020 was the idea that the effects of mass might be achieved without the actual

massing of forces. This pointed to a Pentagon staff victory for those with a vested interest in the massing of forces.

115 JCS, Joint Vision 2010,

July 1996; Joint Vision 2020,

June 2000.

8/6/2019 0203srf

26/54

24 n 2000, for th e first time in years,national defense was an issue in a

Presidential election campaign, madethat w ay by the Repu blican cand idateGeorge W. Bush .

Bush, sp eaking at the Citadel inSepte mber 1999, introduced his posi-tions on defense.116 He said th at eventhe highest morale is eventually under-mined by back-to-back deployments,poor pay, shortages of spare parts andequipment, and rapidly decliningreadiness.

He said the Clinton Administration

wants t hings both ways: To comman dgreat forces, without supp orting th em.In transforming the armed forces, he

wou ld go beyond marginal improvemen tsand use this window of opp ortunity toskip a generation o f techn ology.

Among specific program inten tions, hesaid that At the earliest possible date, myadministration will dep loy anti-ballisticmissile systems, both theater and n ational,to guard against attack and blackmail.

He promised to review th e open-endeddep loyments: Send ing our military onvague, aimless, and en dless deployments

is the sw ift solvent o f morale. ... I willwork hard to find political solutions thatallow an o rderly and timely withdrawalfrom p laces like Kosovo and Bosnia. Wewill encourage our allies to take a broaderrole . We w ill no t be hasty. But w e w ill no tbe permanent peacekeepers, dividingwarring p arties. This is not our strength o rour calling.

But the declaration that got the mostnot ice was from Bushs runn ing mate,Vice Presiden tial Candidate Dick Cheney:Rarely has so much been demanded ofour armed forces, and so little given to

them in re tur n, Chen ey said. George W.Bush and I are going to change that, too . Ihave seen our military at its finest withthe best equipment, the best training, andthe best leadership. I am proud of them. Ihave had the responsibility for th eir well-being. And I can p romise them n ow,helpis on the way .117

Rumsfelds ReviewThere was already considerable

momentum for a defense increase, in

Congress and elsew he re. Even Clinton,on his way out of office, prop osed a2002 de fense b udget $14.2 billionhigher than the FY 2001 level.118

Thus it came as someth ing of asurprise when , shortly after the inaugu-ration in 2001, the White House an-nounced that Bush would stick with the2002 Clinton defense budget untilSecretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeldhad comp leted a sweeping review o fforce structure and requirements todeter mine long-term strategic require-ments.119

Meanw hile, the Administration turnedits energies tow ard a differen t priority,push ing a tax cut throu gh Congress.The fiscal outlook co ntinued tobright en. The Congressional BudgetOffice p rojected a $313 b illion surplusfor 2002, and a cumulative surplus of$5.6 t rillion for 2002-2011.120

Rumsfeld was tight-lipped about thebig review. It was widely believed thatthe study would be run by AndrewMarshall, the Pentagons fabled direc torof net assessment, and that it would bedone by March.

In actuality, Rumsfeld had put morethan a dozen study panels to work beh indclosed doors, but only a few peop le knewthat at the time. The panels consistedmost ly of outsiders. Secu rity was extrao r-dinarily tight. The re sult, no t altogeth ersurprising, was rampan t rumor, con fusion,and d iscord. Rumsfeld didnt con firm th erumors, but he didnt deny them eithe r.

By the middle of May, the upr oarreached the point that Rumsfeld went on amedia blitz, holding 14 pre ss interviewsand media availabilities in three w eeks.

He said th e review wasnt that b ig, that

the work by his panels was just explor-atory, that there was no big plan toreorganize the armed forces. He said thepanel findings would be rolled into thenext Quadrennial Defense Review, wh ichhad earlier slowed down its efforts indeference to the panels. The QDR wasrevived and put on w hat the Pentagoncalled a forced march to p roduce resultsby the middle of the summer.

Rumsfeld reco gnized the magnitudeof the problem.121

116 George W. Bush, A Period

of Consequences, The

Citadel, Sept. 23, 1999.

117 Dick Cheney, speech at

Republican National

Convention, Aug. 2, 2000.

118William S. Cohen, Annual

Report to the President and

Congress, January 2001, p.

244.

119 Ari Fleischer, White House

press briefing, Feb. 5, 2001,

and Thomas Ricks, Clinton

Pentagon Budget to Stand,

Washington Post, Feb. 7,2001.

120 CBO, The Budget and

Economic Outlook: Fiscal

Years 20022011, January

2001.

6 Tr ansf or mat ion and Ter r or ism

I

8/6/2019 0203srf

27/54

First, bec ause w e h aveunde rfunded and overused our forces,we find we are short a division, shortairlift, we have been underfundingaging infrastructu re and facilities, weare sh ort high-demand/ low-densityassets, the aircraft flee t is aging atconsiderable and growing cost tomaintain, the Navy is declining innumbers, and we are steadily fallingbelow acceptable readiness standards....Second, we have skimped on our

peop le, doing harm to their trust andconfidence, as well as to the stability ofour force . ...Third, we h ave unde r invested in

dealing w ith fut ure risks. We h ave failedto invest adequately in the advancedmilitary technologies we will need tomeet the emerging threats of the newcentury.

Fortunately, Rumsfeld said, tran sform-ing part o f the force would be sufficient.The b litzkrieg was an enormous success,but it w as accomplished by only a 13pe rcent transforme d Ger man Army, hesaid.

As the QDR moved forward, theAdministration sent Congress an amendedFY 2002 budget, p rop osing $328.9 billionfor defense.122 That was an increase of$18.4 billion over th e Clinton proposal. Itwas billed as the biggest increase fordefense in many years, which was true.However, it was w ell short o f actual

requirements.Rumsfeld told Congress that it wouldtake $347 billion in 2003anot herincrease of the same size as the b ig onejust proposedto keep the departmentgoing next year on a straight-line basiswith no substantial improvements andbefore addressing important transforma-tion issues.123

Rumsfeld dec lined t o specify theincrease he had requested. According topress repor ts, he sought $35 b illion. TheOffice o f Management and Budgetcountered with $15 b illion, and th ey

settled for $18.4 billion.124

At a Congressional hearing, Rumsfeldtalked about th e level of fund ing availablefor defense. In words that would take ongreater meaning three mon ths later, hereviewed some h istory from the KoreanWar:

North Korea invades South Korea.And wh at did w e do? We said wecouldnt afford an $18 billion budgetwhen it was a $15 billion budget, andOmar Bradley was asking for $18

billion. They said the