Enemy Convergence Is The New Worry For Military Planners

Globalization Creates A New Worry: Enemy Convergence -- At War/New York Times

WASHINGTON — Adm. James G. Stavridis, who stepped down this month as NATO’s supreme commander, has been at war in two wars — overseeing the alliance’s role in the enduring mission in Afghanistan as well as the shorter combat air campaign over Libya.

Combined with his tenure before NATO — he was the top officer at the military’s Southern Command, for a total of seven years in a senior four-star billet — Admiral Stavridis had been the longest-serving global combatant commander in the American military.

As he rose through the ranks of command over a 37-year career in uniform, Admiral Stavridis also came to be recognized as one of the military’s most prolific authors on strategy, operations and tactics. Today, though, ask what worries him most, and he answers in a single word: convergence.

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My Comment: Enemy convergence has been in play for a very long time .... the difference now is that our current global communications network makes such coordination easier to implement and manage.

CJCS Gen. Dempsey's Comments On Sequestration And It's Impact On the U.S. Military

Photo: CJCS Gen. Dempsey

CJCS Gen. Dempsey Signals Strategy Change; Cites Sequestration, Decline Of State Power, Technology Spread -- Aol Defense

WASHINGTON: A meeting last Wednesday between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his five colleagues from the services and the National Guard, followed by a Thursday meeting between CJCS Gen. Martin Dempsey and the new defense secretary, Chuck Hagel. They discussed our national military strategy.

The signs are all there to indicate an important -- if not major -- shift in our strategy in light of sequestration. And now we have these comments from Dempsey today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

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More News On CJCS Gen. Dempsey's Comments On Sequestration And It's Impact On the U.S. Military

Dempsey Vows He, Chiefs Will ‘Lead Through’ Sequester -- US Department of DefenseDempsey hopes for budget deal to stop sequester of defense spending -- Washington Times
‘We face real dangers,’ Dempsey says -- Examiner
Securing America: Defense During Sequester -- FOX News Radio

My Comment: With the strategic review now being ordered, I guess we are now going to find out very quickly on how dangerous it is going to become.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Orders A Strategy Review In Response To Defense Budget Cuts

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks at a Pentagon press briefing on March 15, 2013. Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo/Department of Defense

Defense Chief Orders Strategy Review In Response To Budget Cuts -- Reuters

(Reuters) - Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has directed senior Pentagon officials to re-examine the U.S. military strategy approved last year to see how priorities may need to be adjusted due to budget cuts that took effect on March 1, officials said.

The decision, made on Friday, comes as the Pentagon struggles to cut $46 billion from this year's defense budget and faces the prospect of an additional $50 billion per year in reductions for the next nine years.

"The Department of Defense must constantly examine the choices that underlie our defense strategy, posture and investments, including all past assumptions and systems," Hagel said in a memorandum obtained on Monday by Reuters.

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More News On Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Ordering A Strategy Review In Response To Defense Budget Cuts

Budget cutting forces Pentagon to review strategy -- Washington Post
Hagel orders review of US defense strategy to test its underpinnings in light of budget cuts -- Washington Post/AP
Hagel Orders Pentagon Strategy Review in Uncertain Times -- Bloomberg Businessweek
Pentagon officially begins strategy reassessment -- Washington Times
Pentagon: Civilian, Military Leaders Asked To Examine Defense Strategy -- RTT
Hagel orders review of US defense strategy -- FOX News/AP
Military reviewing strategy in light of tightening budgets -- CNN
Hagel orders review of plans for Asia-centric military strategy -- Stars and Stripes
DoD Reviewing Strategy in Wake of Budget Cuts -- Defense News

My Comment: This review should have been done before the defense cuts were implemented.

Beware Of Generals Bearing "Gifts"

Commemorating 9/11 - Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, President Barack Obama and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, render honors as the national anthem plays during a ceremony to commemorate the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2012. DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley

America’s Strategic Stupidity -- Andrew J. Bacevich, The Spectator

Obama’s new foreign policy team must beware of generals bearing predictions

Every few months, America’s four-star admirals and generals gather at a military base not far from Washington to participate in what General Martin E. Dempsey, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, calls his ‘strategic seminar’. The aim is to foresee the future, anticipating security challenges that the United States will face in the coming years, thereby enabling the Pentagon to prepare itself accordingly. With that end in mind, Dempsey and his colleagues engage in what the New York Times has styled ‘a lethally earnest game of Risk’, participants striding across ‘a giant map of the world, larger than a basketball court’ as they posit various crises and speculate on the response each might entail.

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My Comment: In an ideal world it is the political leadership who makes the decision .... and they tell the military leadership to implement it .... and if they cannot, they better have a good reason on why. Has Washington reversed these roles .... generals dictating threats, course of actions, strategies, and policies .... and our political leaders complying .... or .... is this one big distraction?

Andrew Bacevich's best paragraph is the last ....

.... The one thing that the US actually could do to secure its future is the one thing that it refuses to do: demonstrate a capacity to manage its own affairs; live within its means; set its own house in order. In Washington, talk about global strategy provides an excuse to avoid doing what needs to be done.

Indeed.

America's Fiscal Crisis Will Sink The Pentagon's Pacific Str

Pacific Strategy Is Sunk If We Can't Solve Fiscal Crisis: State Dept Official -- Otto Kreisher, Aol Defense

WASHINGTON: There's an increasing consensus in Washington that America's future lies in the Pacific. It's one of the few things both parties can agree on. Unfortunately, if we can't reach an agreement to get our fiscal house in order, the governments in the Asia-Pacific region will have every reason not to take our strategy seriously.

Republicans and Democrats agree that "the future, and the history, of the 21st century will be written in the Asia-Pacific region," declared the State Department's top official for the region, Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell. While the US is not abandoning the Middle East, Europe, or the rest of the world, he said, "the wheel has been turned and that we are now proceeding in what is our national destiny - as an Asia-Pacific strong partner."

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My Comment: I expect Washington to just "kick the can down the road" for another Congress and administration to deal with. Unfortunately .... that "can" is getting bigger, an kicking it down seems more and more unlikely. Something will break .... and I expect that it will be the Pacific strategy that will be revised.

Why The Pentagon Should Be 'Politically Correct'

U.S. Marines board a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter on the flight deck of the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard under way in the Phillipine Sea, Sept. 2, 2012. The Marines are assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Bonhomme Richard is the lead ship of the only forward-deployed amphibious ready group. The helicopter is assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 262. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Adam M. Bennett

The Case For A Politically Correct Pentagon -- Michael O'Hanlon, Foreign Policy

Why we need to move from Air-Sea Battle to Air-Sea Operations.

As readers of Foreign Policy understand quite well, a popular concept in planning circles at the Pentagon today, especially within the U.S. Air Force and Navy, is Air-Sea Battle, a doctrine that focuses on preserving and protecting U.S. and allied access to the maritime commons around Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and other areas such as the South China Sea. This approach to future war is in part a response to the march of technology. It is also in part a response, surely, to the rise of China -- a country bent on establishing greater control and influence over waterways to its east and complicating American efforts to dominate the seas the way it has for more than a half century. Although Iran and one or two other states provide some of the impetus for Air-Sea Battle doctrine, China is overwhelmingly the country with the resources and aspirations that has provoked this new American military doctrine.

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My Comment: They renamed the U.S. War Department to the U.S. Department of Defense .... so why not Air-Sea Battle to Air-Sea Operations. What's my take .... I like the name 'War Department'.

Why China Does Not Like America's Model For Future Wars

(Click on Image to Enlarge)
What is Air-Sea Battle?
China has invested heavily during the past decade in precision missile systems and sophisticated radar designed to keep U.S. ships and fighter jets beyond the inner island chain shown below. Air-Sea Battle is the U.S. military’s concept for disabling those systems using long-range bombers and submarines. The concept is designed not so much to fight a war as to convince the Chinese that any conflict with U.S. forces would be long and costly. Pentagon officials say Air-Sea Battle is not solely focused on China, which they describe as the “pacing” threat. The following approaches are the basis for the concept. Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment. | Greg Jaffe, Gene Thorp, Bill Webster/The Washington Post.

U.S. Model For A Future War Fans Tensions With China And Inside Pentagon -- Washington Post

When President Obama called on the U.S. military to shift its focus to Asia earlier this year, Andrew Marshall, a 91-year-old futurist, had a vision of what to do.

Marshall’s small office in the Pentagon has spent the past two decades planning for a war against an angry, aggressive and heavily armed China.

No one had any idea how the war would start. But the American response, laid out in a concept that one of Marshall’s longtime proteges dubbed “Air-Sea Battle,” was clear.

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My Comment: There is a lot of red meat in this story. What's my take .... the Chinese have already developed war strategies and plans to fight their neighbors, seize Taiwan, and wage war against U.S. forces. But that is all that it is .... a hypothetical war plan with no massive resources behind it .... so U.S. concerns are moot.

The Americans also have the same thing .... a great Air-Sea Battle Plan plan to wage war against China .... but with no serious money or resources behind it ... China's concerns are also moot.

So we are at an impasse .... which when you consider the alternative .... is probably preferable.

Obama's War Strategy Is Taking Shape

White House Photo

What US Manhunt For LRA Leaders Reveals About Obama's War Strategy -- Anna Mulrine, Christian Science Monitor

Obama is sending 100 Special Operations Forces to central Africa to help track down leaders of the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army), a brutal guerrilla group. Surgical strikes at enemy leaders are emerging as the preferred US strategy.

As 100 US Special Operations Forces begin deploying to Africa to help local troops pursue the brutal leader of a murderous rebel group, a clearer picture is emerging of America’s preferred warfare strategy in a time of fiscal restraint: fewer troops, more drones, and the aggressive targeting of enemy leaders by special operations forces.

In a letter sent to Congress on Friday, President Obama made clear that the specific goal of US forces is to help in “the removal from the battlefield” of Joseph Kony and other senior leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla group that has killed thousands of civilians, routinely raped women, and abducted hundreds of children.

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My Comment: At the height of their empire, the Romans did the same thing. They did not have the manpower to keep everyone in check, so to compensate they always made it very clear that if troubles should arise, they would specifically go after the leaders. This strategy was effective for centuries .... and guess what .... they did not have drones.

Drones Are Becoming The Main Weapon Of Choice In U.S. War Strategy

A Reaper drone aircraft lands during a training program at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. U.S. commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq have demanded an increase in number of drone aircraft in the next three years. Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times/MCT/Newscom

Precision Strikes Are New Weapon Of Choice -- USA Today

WASHINGTON – The United States will increasingly turn to precision airstrikes to counter the threat from radical Islam as it shrinks its military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This administration has made a very conscious decision that it wants to get out of large conventional-warfare solutions and wants to emphasize counterterrorism and a lighter footprint on the ground," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official.

On Friday, a U.S. airstrike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an anti-American cleric who was behind several high-profile attempted attacks on the United States. His rhetoric also helped inspire Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who is charged with killing 13 people during a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, a military base in Texas.

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My Comment: A must read commentary on the growing importance of drones is the following .... Sex and the Single Drone: The Latest in Guarding the Empire.

The Mullen Doctrine: A New U.S. Approach Towards War

MULLEN VISIT - Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addresses sailors assigned to Naval Special Warfare Group One in Coronado, Calif., March 4, 2010. DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen Outlines A More Restrained Art Of War -- Washington Post

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, outlined a new U.S. approach to war in a series of speeches this week that replaces overwhelming firepower with more restrained use of force to safeguard civilian lives.

The speeches, delivered at Kansas State University and the Army's Fort Leavenworth, amount to a formal effort on the part of the chairman to codify how a decade of combat is changing the military's understanding of its role in battle and, more broadly, its place in U.S. foreign policy.

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My Comment: This "new" policy completely flies in the face of military and war history. Almost all conflicts in the past ended when over whelming force was used by one side over the other .... a concept that the Powell Doctrine took to heart. The Mullen Doctrine is a radical departure from this concept .... and one that I believe will only perpetuate war and conflict.

Case in point, I am an avid reader and student of Sri Lankan history .... in particular I have focused on their civil war that only ended last year. For almost 20 years the Sri Lankan Government pursued a policy that is remarkable similar to what General Mullen is advocating .... the end result was stalemate and continuous war. It was only when a new government decided to pursue an all out war doctrine .... a Colin Powell Doctrine .... that the dynamics on the ground changed completely within two years. There were many casualties from this new policy, but it was successful .... it ended the war.

Our war with the Taliban can only end when we and our allies make a full commitment to seek the leaders and commanders of this movement .... chase them to their sanctuaries .... and either kill or capture them. But since this is not going to be the case .... we neither have the will nor resources on the ground to make a difference .... I will predict that endless war and conflict is going to be the end result.

Pentagon To Drop 'Two-War' Strategy

Review Shows Dramatic Shift In Pentagon's Thinking -- CNN

Washington (CNN) -- The Pentagon will no longer shape the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars at once, but rather prepare for numerous conflicts and not all in the same style, according to a draft of a new strategic outlook the Pentagon is announcing on Monday.

The new mantra for military planners will replace the almost 25-year-old combat planning style of fighting and winning two major conventional wars in two different locations in favor of a fighting force that is capable of protecting U.S. interests around the world from a range of threats, from terrorism to cyber attacks.
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My Comment: This is a dramatic shift .... but probably long overdue. Best to be prepared to fight the wars that you are fighting and/or will fight, instead of preparing to fight two major wars that no one has the capability to do effectively today.

More News On The Flynn Report

Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, director of intelligence in Afghanistan, confers with his brother Col. Charlie Flynn, left, an aide to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. and allied commander in Afghanistan. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

The Flynn Report, Itself A Symptom Of Deep Problems In The Government Establishment -- Fabius Maximus

I lack the time to write an analysis of the Flynn report: “Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan“, by Michael T. Flynn (Major General, USA), Matt Pottinger (Captain, USMC), and Paul D. Batchelor (DIA). In brief, I believe…

• It’s important.
• Nagel’s grossly understated the event with ”“ it was an irregular way to disseminate an idea for a serving officer”. (source)
• This is the best brief cut at the report’s conclusions: “A Bit More on the Flynn Report“, Michael Cohen, Democracy Arsenal, 8 January 2010
• It shows that the internal dynamics in DC are screwed up even beyond what their worst critics (e.g., Lind) suspected. The wheels have already fallen off.
  

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My Comment: I agree with FM's final point .... IMO there is much more to this story; we’ve only scratched the surface.

I also have been limited by time to aggregate news links to this story. It is an important story .... and it is (probably) symbolic of the many problems that we have in developing comprehensive and objective foreign/military/political strategies.

Time permitting, I will have a comprehensive list of links on this story by 21:00 EST today.

Revising the American Way of War Pt 2

US Special Forces soldier standing by with two MH-47Es on the deck. (Source: unknown.)

From New Wars:

We continue our study of Industrial Warfare, also known as the American Way of War. Today, a glimpse at a few battles in the last 20 years that may have distracted us from what is truly important, the threat from Third World radicalism, and the new Fourth Generation Warfare. Also, how we might make a U-turn back to reality.

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Previous Post from New Wars: Revising the American Way of War Pt 1

My Comment: Another thought provoking analysis on how American warfare tactics and strategy is evolving .... or not. The comments that are posted on both of these articles deserved to be read also.