Tag Archives: Defense Procurement Policy

Firing offense

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates summarily fired the top civilian official last week, the reason he gave was a grave failure of leadership with respect to that service’s nuclear missions.  The low priority assigned by the Pentagon to its nuclear stewardship responsibilities is systemic and acute.  Consequently, this act of accountability is both warranted and a needed wake-up call to all the armed forces.

As it happens, there is another ground on which the dismissal of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne could be justified.  He was specifically brought in to clean up Air Force procurement, but ended up presiding over a disastrously mishandled procurement of the KC-X next-generation aerial tanker.  The decision to award this contract worth conservatively $35 billion to a team led by the European aerospace conglomerate, EADS, should be considered a firing offense.

In the next few days, the Government Accountability Office is expected to rule on a protest to that award by the losing bidder, Boeing. If the GAO does its job, there is little doubt it will conclude the Air Force unfairly, even cynically, manipulated the acquisition process so as to enable EADS to compete with an aircraft that did not meet the service’s stated requirements and that was significantly more costly to operate.

In documents that have come to light since the contract award was announced in February, including an Air Force briefing provided to the losing company and a redacted version of Boeing’s protest, a number of facts are clear:

The Boeing tanker, based on the 767 commercial aircraft, is a known commodity.  Two were delivered to the Japanese air force earlier this spring.  Four more are currently being built for Italy.  Its American manufacturing line is well-established.  Its estimated costs are grounded in data developed during more than 10 million 767 flight hours.

By contrast, the EADS alternative known as the KC-30 is more the proverbial bird in the bush.  None has been delivered. None has moved aviation fuel through an operational boom.  And none has been produced by the politically-driven, Rube Goldberg-style production line that EADS proposes to establish on two continents – unless, that is, the costs grow.  In which case, it turns out, the French-led conglomerate will build all of the U.S. Air Force’s new tankers in Toulouse, France, not Mobile, Alabama, with attendant loss of the promised American jobs.

Speaking of workforce, there is the natty problem that unions representing EADS employees have a record of rabid hostility towards the United States and its policies.  The effect of entrusting one of the most important elements of our power-projection capabilities to foreign labor capable of production sabotage and/or work-stoppage could be catastrophic.  That is especially true insofar as the reliance on EADS would not be confined to the manufacturing of the tankers.  If past practice is any guide, the company that produced the planes would also be relied upon for maintenance over their expected 40-year service life.

Quite apart from the nationality of the source, there is the basic question of competence.  Boeing is no newcomer to the business of building and supporting aerial refueling tankers.  In fact it has been at it for 79 years and delivered a total of 2,000 tanker aircraft.  It has delivered 1,800 operational refueling booms, the complicated piece of equipment used to move fuel safely and swiftly from the tanker to the recipient aircraft.  

By contrast, the EADS team has been trying to develop a tanker business for just the last five years.  To date, it has not delivered any aerial refuelers or operational booms.  To repose confidence in such a team, to say nothing of its cost projections, entails a leap of faith that seems irresponsible in the extreme.

Finally, there is the matter of the mission.  The Air Force, until strong-armed by a few legislators, rightly did not want as big a plane as the KC-30 for the simple reason that it is far better to have a larger number of smaller, more fuel-efficient aircraft capable of operating from many airfields.  In the competition, the KC-767 was deemed to have 98 strengths (“discriminators”) to just 30 for the Airbus option, with only 1 assessed weakness versus 5 for the KC-30.  If the decision to go with the inferior, but larger aircraft stands, the taxpayer will have to eat an estimated $30 billion in additional fuel costs and billions more in otherwise unnecessary military construction charges.

The new leadership of the Air Force – which reportedly will include as its Secretary Michael Donley, a well-respected veteran and national security official during several administrations – should shortly have an opportunity, thanks to the GAO, to revisit the Wynne tanker selection.  If and when it does so, the service must make its decision on the basis of:

  • its actual requirement, not one adapted to suit a competitor, EADS, that could not otherwise compete;
  • real costs, not those artificially and arbitrarily inflated to make Boeing’s proposal less viable and low-balled to help EADS; and
  • the nation’s interest in having an indigenous supplier of vital tanker aircraft, produced by a loyal work-force capable of not only manufacturing the planes properly and cost-effectively but of reliably supporting them for decades to come. 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.

The EADS tanker contradiction

One major reason voters are fixated on change this election cycle is that to them our government appears dysfunctional. Sadly, this observation has much truth to it – at times the three Federal branches and various agencies work against one another, rather than strive to achieve common goals. 

A perfect example of such dysfunction is the recent announcement that the next generation U.S. Air Force tanker will be based on the Airbus A330 jetliner currently built in Toulouse-Blagnac, France. This selection may seem reasonable to Department of Defense (DoD) procurement personnel, but it directly undercuts other actions by other arms of our government.

[More]For example, having just added $140 billion to the deficit by providing tax rebate checks and business incentives with the hope of creating more investment and jobs, Congress is less than pleased at the $35 billion tanker contract which will mainly produce jobs in Europe and not in America.

Airbus’ parent company, the European Aeronautical Defense and Space Company (EADS) has made numerous assurances that its KC-30 tanker team will eventually create as many as 25,000 jobs in the United States. As the New York Times and others have pointed out though, such calculations are highly speculative. [1]  

For evidence of how truly tenuous the job numbers are, one only has to visit the KC-30 website.  In the state-by-state economic plan listed on the site, it is claimed over 208,000 jobs will be created, supported, or sustained. [2]  If true, this would mean that the modern technological marvel that is the KC-30 requires over three times the manpower to build than the last truly great French engineering success, the Suez Canal. [3]

Needless to say, a healthy dose of skepticism regarding the economic benefits of the KC-30 is not only appropriate but highly recommended. This would not be the first time EADS or its subsidiaries have used deceptive advertising or creative accounting. In April 2007 Airbus was called to task for ads claiming, "Half of the new Airbus A380 will be produced by U.S. Companies," while at the same time the French press was reporting that only 21% of the A380 was made in all the countries of North America combined.[4]

In February 2006 an EADS ad – one made for the very same aircraft the U.S. Air Force wants to purchase – came under scrutiny by England’s Advertising Standard Authority (ASA).  In the ad an image of the Airbus A330 tanker carried the slogan: "I am British." The ASA ruled that the advertisement breached its codes on substantiation and truthfulness, and subsequently banned it from the national press.[5]

Additionally, in a 2003 response to Senator Patty Murray’s requested investigation into Airbus claims – that it created 100,000 jobs in the United States, and contracted with more than 800 U.S. firms – Under Secretary for International Trade Grant Aldonas confirmed that Airbus wildly overstated its contributions to the United States economy and that it could only verify 500 of the "created" jobs and it could only find 250 of the 800 subcontractors Airbus claimed.[6]

Given such prior exaggerations, it is hardly surprising that EADS is now making the outrageous claim that the A330 tanker is an "American" airplane and will have 59% U.S. content, based on labor, materials and subsystems.[7]  The real surprise is that anyone would believe them.

Another reason the A330 is a puzzling contract choice is that the U.S. is currently involved in a trade dispute over illegal subsidies to Airbus.  The U.S. Trade Representative has an open formal complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that European Union nations have provided Airbus with billions of dollars of unfair subsidies to the detriment of the U.S. aerospace industry.[8]

In total Airbus has received over $15 billion in such support, according to U.S. and European government documents.   As BusinessWeek commentator Stanley Holmes wrote, "Commercial plane manufacturing is probably the riskiest business on the planet. Launch aid shifts the risk from Airbus to the European governments because the manufacturer isn’t required to repay if the aircraft program is unsuccessful."[9]

Since 2000, this launch aid combined with other subsidies has allowed Airbus to gain 20 percentage points of market share, all taken directly from U.S. airplane manufactures.[10]

DoD’s decision to purchase one of the very aircraft documented by the U.S. Trade Representative to have received illegal European subsidies that directly harmed U.S. firms and workers is beyond dysfunctional; it is indefensible.

(Public Domain Article: Readers may distribute or use this article in its entirety.)

 

 

 

[1] Nicola Clark and Jeff Bailey, "European Firm Says U.S. Jet Deal Jobs for Both Countries," (March 3, 2008). New York Times

[2] State-by-State Economic Impact, KC-30, http://www.northropgrumman.com/kc30/benefits/impact.html (accessed March 4, 2008).

[3] Zachary Karabell, Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2003), pg 171.

[4] "L’ero fort constaint Airbus a produire hors d’ Europe." Paris, Les Echos (April 12, 2007).

[5] UK Advertising Standards Authority, "Non-broadcast Adjudication: EADS" (February 15, 2006).

[6] Under Secretary for International Trade, US Department of Commerce, Letter (March, 18 2003).  

[7] Daniel Michaels and August Cole, "Pentagon Embattled Over Tanker Decision," Wall Street Journal (March 5, 2008).

[8] "European Communities – Measures Affecting Trade in Large Civil Aircraft." World Trade Organization Dispute DS316 (October 6, 2004).

[9] Stanley Holmes, "Finally, a Boeing-Airbus Showdown," BusinessWeek (October 7, 2004).  

[10] Deputy Assistant US Trade Representative, Press Release (September 25, 2007).

Center reissues analysis of EADS contracts

Tomorrow, the Boeing Company reportedly will be briefed by the U.S. Air Force about that service’s controversial rejection of the American firm’s aerial refueling aircraft proposal in favor of that offered by a joint venture dominated by the European Aeronautic, Defense, and Space (EADS) consortium.  As public concern rises, it is already becoming clear that the Pentagon failed to give due attention to many worrisome concerns about EADS when it awarded the multi-billion dollar contract.

In April 2007, these issues were discussed at length in an Occasional Paper published by the Center for Security Policy entitled EADS is Welcome to Compete for U.S. Defense Contracts – But First It Must Clean Up Its Act.  Among the highlighted points:

  • First, a would-be partner [in defense procurements] will be difficult to trust if, for example, its government-owner/sponsor and the locus of the corporate headquarters spies on this country, steals its secrets to the detriment of U.S. interests, and uses bribery and other chicanery to undermine this country around the world. While EADS may not be directly responsible for such behavior, numerous sources – including a former CIA director, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the European Parliament – indicate that France, one of the governments that has such ties to EADS, has been.

  • Second, it would be dangerous for the United States to rely on the goods and services of a company that is part-owned by the Russian government, and in which Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin wants a say in the management.

  • Third, Congress will be hard-pressed to justify sending the tax dollars of American workers abroad, to pay subsidized European workers who belong to militantly anti-U.S. labor unions that express hatred of our country and what it stands for, and who back politicians who work within NATO to undermine U.S. defense interests.

  • Fourth, it is a challenge, at best, to trust a major foreign supplier who deliberately seeks to circumvent U.S. nonproliferation laws and thumbs its nose at Washington while selling military equipment, over the strongest U.S. objections, to America’s current and possibly future adversaries.

 

In the interest of ensuring that the congressional and public examination of the Air Force’s Eurotanker decision is informed, thorough, and unstinting, the Center today is reissuing this important examination of EADS.  Many aspects of that firm’s behavior cry out for close scrutiny and, in many cases, corrective action.

Value of Jake as a ready innovation base

Ever wish, upon hearing that yet another of our soldiers or Marines has been killed or wounded while operating in dangerous areas of Iraq or Afghanistan, that you were seeing more truly new innovations and breakthroughs in tactics to meet the threats our warfighters are facing – to reduce the chances it will happen again?  

Such a powerful and understandable sentiment seems to be operating in the minds of millions of Americans who hope that by our large and growing defense budgets, the troops will increasingly get what they need in the way of equipment to do their missions, and more safely.  To a considerable degree, that is the case, but much of this is relative to defensive technologies rather than new offensive tactics and capabilities that can serve to better accomplish missions and shorten conflicts.

What if there were something more we could be doing, something that might make a real difference – and provide a base for bold new tactical innovation and adaptation – both for the safety of our guys on the ground and for their success?  I have seen the interest of our military experts and my guess is that millions of Americans would press Congress to be assuring we were doing it.

It turns out that there is something American leaders can do to transform the effectiveness and survivability of infantry soldiers and Marine "ground-pounders," troops who are obliged to perform today’s tough jobs in urban settings and elsewhere pretty much the same way their grandfathers did in World War II.  It involves a systems platform known as "Jake" – an infantryman’s personal mobility, sensor pack, weapons and robotics platform, maybe best described as a "Segway on steroids."

The invention of the Jake is a classic American story.  It is the brainchild of Russell Strong, a highly proven leader in concept development and engineering of agricultural and industrial equipment, an innovator known in his industry as "Mr. Tractor" for his revolutonary designs for major corporations both here and in Europe.  As a side project, he started in 1999 trying to perfect a means of providing revolutionary mobility for wheelchair-bound individuals.  When a prototype was operated by veterans of Vietnam and Somalia, they urged him to consider adapting this design for their comrades fighting today’s wars – and tomorrow’s.

The result is a compact unit with two Humvee-size primary wheels for one soldier or more and up to a 2,000-pound pallet of gear, extending with today’s technologies into also being a soldier’s ready robot – big robot – to take on high risk tasks, scouting maneuvers, resupply or deception tactics.  This platform relies on its agility, speed and ability to operate in a "swarm" to open unprecedented options to troops fighting in alleys and other areas or working to interact constructively with civilians, while deterring attacks. 

Today’s advances in hybrid-electric drives provide ability to move stealthily in combat and with minimal disruption in crowded marketplaces.  Each unit can also serve as a source of electrical power for the military, or emergency response, something always in short supply in forward operating positions. And, the unique modularity of this platform allows mission-configuring also for 4WD, 6WD and track units to handle varied terrain and greater payloads, all with shared logistics of common parts and technology modules to simplify sustainment of operations by our troops.

Institutional Resistance

I have heard visionary military leaders like the Army’s retired Vice Chief of Staff, Gen. Richard Cody, speak of the Jake as "the warrior transformer" and "Smart Horse". Interestingly, the more junior the personnel, the greater the appreciation for the contribution such devices might make, now and in the future.  Some preparing to deploy to Iraq have, when shown an early Jake prototype, pleaded with Mr. Strong to let them take it along.

So, what’s the problem?  The very qualities that make the Jake such a potentially transformative asset are too foreign, or without proof of concept, to overcome natural reactions of resistance within the institutional military. If the concepts are understood, there is still concern for turmoil risks of its early adoption.  Like IBM, which once famously failed to appreciate that the day of the large, immensely expensive mainframe computer was giving way to the era of PCs and proliferating software, the armed forces need to appreciate that Jake represents the advent of an era when "networked" or "distributed" warfare is the norm – not something to just pay lip-service to. 

For their part, many defense contractors recognize that Jake could enable them finally to overcome the weight-barrier to equipping foot soldiers with more firepower, technologies designed to defeat varied threats and snipers and the integrated support of unmanned aerial vehicles.  In the absence of a stated military requirement for Jake, however, few are willing to provide the $10-15 million required to develop and equip the first next generation prototypes needed to evaluate this platform and begin further evolving concepts with our Services for its utilization. 

The Bottom Line

As things stand now, without the Pentagon’s ability to get "outside the box" in a path for such a systems-based concept, or intervention from Capitol Hill, the whole effort to realize the Jake’s promise could come to naught.

Satellite intercept shows missile defense need

The Center for Security Policy commends the United States Navy for Wednesday’s successful shoot-down of a failing spy satellite that could have posed a threat to human health and American national security had it fallen to earth.  The operation validates the Center’s longstanding support for and confidence in sea-based missile defense and its evolving capability to protect the American people. 

The intercept by a sea-based anti-missile missile also demonstrates the utter unworkability — as well as the undesirability — of campaigns being promoted by, among others, the Russians and Chinese governments seeking to prohibit the deployment of anti-satellite weaponry and other steps that purportedly would prevent the "militarization of outer space."   The fact is that there are myriad ways to interfere with satellites and any such ban would be unverifiable, unenforceable and one-sided as enemies of this country would be sure to violate it.

[More]The purpose of the SM-3 missile launch – conducted from the USS Lake Erie, northwest of Hawaii – was to destroy a U.S. spy satellite that had failed to achieve its intended orbit shortly after launch in late 2006.  The satellite, fueled with hydrazine, could have posed health risks had the satellite landed in a populated area.  Had it survived reentry, the sensitive technology aboard could have been compromised.  Instead, it appears that the missile scored a direct hit on the satellite’s hydrazine tank at 133 nautical miles above the Pacific Ocean.   

The success of this operation underscores the wisdom of President Bush in undertaking to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and to begin deployment of in particular sea-based missile defenses.  It also serves to highlight the urgency of expanding the number of these systems in the world’s oceans, especially off of the east coast of the United States, to counter potential ballistic missile threats from rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. 

In light of the success of yesterday’s intercept, the Center and others committed to fielding robust missile defenses urge the Bush Administration to work with the Congress to add $250 million in additional budgetary requests during FY 2009 and 2010 for the following purposes:

  • Nine additional Aegis ships deployed to the Atlantic with missile defense capability by the end of 2011;
  • Increase the SM-3 interceptor production rate to four per month;
  • Provide for rapid deployment of SM-2 near-term terminal defense;
  • Provide for an East Coast Test Range to defend against SCUD and other short-range missiles off the East Coast of the United States; 
  • Provide capability for Aegis ships to intercept missiles at the early flight stages after launches from the Middle East or North Korea at the United States and Europe;
  • Provide for initial development of a light-weight advanced technology kill vehicle (ATKV) for the Standard Missile, Block II; and
  • Provide support to Combatant Commanders to improve the ability to address midcourse countermeasures, operations support, and training.

Gordon England’s war

In darkened theaters around the country, millions of Americans have been getting a civics lesson. In a somewhat romanticized and selective rendering of "Charlie Wilson’s War," they have seen how a colorful congressman managed to work behind closed doors to fund a project — arming Afghans fighting Soviet invaders — with momentous consequences, both intended and unintended.

Today, decisions perhaps equally momentous are again being made behind closed doors in official Washington. Many are driven by a single man, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, with a zeal worthy of Charlie Wilson at his prime, if little of his panache.

The Pentagon’s No. 2 has traditionally run "the Building," managing its vast bureaucracy and effectively being the ultimate allocator of funds among its competing programs and responsibilities. Mr. England has the unenviable task of playing such a role at a time when defense funding is substantially larger in real terms than over much of the last few decades yet — thanks to extensive, and expensive, worldwide combat and combat-support operations around the world — woefully inadequate to meet the military’s recapitalization requirements.

Matters have been made worse by the fact that neither this nor previous administrations have invested the huge sums required fully to modernize the Army and Marine Corps’ armored forces, the Navy’s fleets and all three services’ air arms. To varying degrees, recapitalization programs have been pursued, but most have been delayed, dramatically reduced and, in some cases, canceled outright.

The result has been to leave the armed forces fighting today’s wars with yesterday’s weapons. While many have been improved and their useful lives extended with more contemporary technology, our troops are handicapped — and exposed unnecessarily to peril — because they are operating outdated and even obsolescing equipment.

To some extent, this travesty is obscured by the nature of today’s wars. Counterinsurgency operations place a premium on different weaponry and tactics than would conflicts with what are now euphemistically called "peer" or "near-peer" competitors. In this case, however, it is not the generals who blinded by thoughts of "fighting the last war."

In fact, most in uniform appreciate that countries like Russia and China are demonstrating a determination to field militaries comparable to, and capable of inflicting great harm on, the best of our armed forces. Worse, they are both proliferating advanced weapon systems designed for that purpose to others who wish us ill, from the mullahs in Iran to Kim Jong-il’s North Korea to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

The best way to contend with these and other emerging threats is to dissuade such adversaries from believing that conflict with the United States could ever redound to their benefit. Toward that end, this country should field wherever possible decisively superior military equipment. A case in point is the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor.

This plane is quite simply the best fighter aircraft in the world. Thanks to a combination of "stealthy" characteristics that make it very difficult to detect and target, the ability to operate for sustained periods at supersonic speeds and its extraordinary agility, the Raptor seems likely to secure for years to come something Americans have taken for granted in every conflict since World War II: air superiority essential to victory on the ground. In operational testing and deployments to date, the "Fifth Generation" F-22 has demonstrated the ability to defeat the best adversary aircraft and most sophisticated air defenses of the kind Russia has just agreed to sell Iran.

Yet, in Gordon England’s Pentagon, the Raptor is an endangered species. Charlie Wilson labored in secret to secure funds to provide more and better arms to the Afghans. The "DepSecDef" adamantly insists in the closed-door budget deliberations over which he presides that production of the world’s best fighter be terminated next year.

Fortunately, many of Charlie Wilson’s successors on Capitol Hill have begun to engage on the question of whether to keep open the production line for the F-22. A bipartisan group involving some 200 members of the House and Senate representing nearly every political stripe wrote Mr. England’s boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, last month urging that the Raptor line be kept open.

It seems obvious that the momentous decision of whether to terminate the F-22 at just 180 aircraft — one that could prove fateful in deterring a future conflict with increasingly hostile and aggressive adversaries — should be made not by a lame-duck presidency but a newly mandated one. In practical terms, this will require Mr. England to stop waging war against the F-22, allowing more than $500 million now earmarked for termination costs to be applied instead to long-lead procurement of one more block of 20 Raptors and permitting the Air Force to budget the substantially larger sums required in fiscal 2010 fully to fund them.

Ultimately, the decision whether America will be able to deter future conflicts, and to wage them successfully if deterrence fails, will depend on a comprehensive recapitalization of every one of the armed services.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff are calling for a sustained allocation of more resources — specifically, at least 4 percent of gross domestic product. Now is the time to determine whether the candidates to be our next commander in chief will pledge to do so.

America’s best friends

Two major arms sales were announced over the weekend. First, the US announced that it is planning to sell Saudi Arabia $20 billion in advanced weapons systems, including Joint Direct Attack Munition kits or JDAMs that are capable of transforming regular gravitational bombs into precision-guided "smart" weapons.

Largely in an attempt to neutralize Congressional opposition to the proposed sale, the Bush administration also announced that it plans to increase annual military assistance to Israel by some 25 percent next year and that it hopes that next year’s increase in assistance will be maintained by the next administration.

The second arms sale was the reported Russian agreement to sell Iran 250 advanced long-ranged Sukhoi-30 fighter jets and aerial fuel tankers capable of extending the jets’ range by thousands of kilometers. Russia’s massive armament of Iran in this and in previous sales over the past two years make clear that from Russia’s perspective, all threats to US interests, including Shi’ite expansionism, work to Moscow’s advantage.

On the face of it, these contrasting US and Russian announcements seem to signal that geopolitics have reverted to the Cold War model of two superpowers competing for global power by, among other things, assisting their proxies in fighting one another. Yet, today the situation is not the same as it was before.

Today, the US finds itself competing not only against an emergent Russia, but against Iran, and the Shi’ite expansionism it advances. Moreover, it finds itself under attack from Sunni jihadism, which is incubated and financed by Saudi Arabia, America’s primary ally in the Persian Gulf.

The US’s proposed arms sale to Saudi Arabia has raised pointed criticism in Israel and among Israel’s supporters in the US. As senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post Monday, the JDAM sale to Saudi Arabia constitutes a strategic threat to Israel which has no way of defending itself against JDAM capabilities.

To assess the reasonableness of Israel’s opposition to the proposed sale, and to understand the sale’s significance against the background of emerging regional and global threats to US national security interests, it is worthwhile to revisit US actions toward Israel and Saudi Arabia during the Cold War when checking Soviet expansion worldwide was the main goal of US foreign policy.

The US held Israel at arms length until after its stunning victory against Soviet clients Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Six Day War. In the aftermath of Israel’s victory, the US realized that Israel was a natural ally in checking Soviet power in the Middle East. As a result, in 1968 it began providing Israel with political and military aid. This policy paid off in spades in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and in the 1982 Lebanon War when the IDF handily beat the Soviets’ proxy armies. Indeed, from the US perspective, there was no downside to supporting Israel. Israel’s patent lack of expansionist ambitions ensured that the US would suffer no ancillary blowback for its support.

The US-Israel alliance’s central weakness was US’s perception of Saudi Arabia as its strategic ally. This weakness came to the fore most prominently in 1981 with the Reagan administration’s decision to sell AWACs spy planes to the Saudis. As is the case with the US’s current proposed arms sale to the Saudis, back then Israel perceived the AWACs sale as a strategic threat to its national security. Yet, since checking Soviet expansionism and not securing Israel was the US’s primary strategic aim, and since the US perceived Saudi Arabia as an ally against Soviet expansionism, the Reagan administration pushed the sale forward against Israel’s strenuous objections.

In the end, the AWACs were not used against Israel. Yet by the same token, they also did nothing to curb Soviet expansionism or advance any other US interest. During the 1991 Gulf War, the Saudis played no effective combat role against Iraq.

The main Saudi contribution to the US’s victory in the Cold War was its willingness to finance the mujahadeen in Afghanistan who fought the Soviet invasion. There can be no doubt that the rout of the Soviet military in Afghanistan played a central role in causing the dissolution of the Soviet empire. But there is also no question that the blowback from the war in Afghanistan has been enormously detrimental to US national security and to global security as a whole.

The mujadaheen’s US-armed and Saudi financed victory against the Soviets in Afghanistan fed the aspirations of Saudi supported Sunni jihadists. It spawned al-Qaida and provided arms and combat experience to forces that would come back to haunt the US.

So as far as the Middle East and Central Asia are concerned, a primary lesson of the Cold War relates to the relative weight the US can securely place in its alliance with Israel on the one hand, and its alliance with the Saudis on the other. Israel used US support in a manner that advanced both Israel’s national security and US geopolitical interests with no blowback. The Saudis were either inconsequential, or advanced US interests in a manner that caused enormous blowback.

Today as the US faces Russian hostility, Iranian expansionism and Saudi-financed Sunni jihadists, it remains afflicted by the Cold War dilemma of the relative importance of its alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia. On the face of it, given that today the potential for blowback in supporting Saudi Arabia is far higher and eminently more foreseeable than it was 25 years ago, it should seem clear that in assessing its strategic assets and interests in the region, the US would place far greater weight on its alliance with Israel.

Unfortunately, today the Bush administration is behaving counterintuitively. It pursues its alliance with Saudi Arabia with vigor while eschewing and downgrading its alliance with Israel.

The administration’s hostility toward Israel is not limited to its intention to arm the Saudis with weapons capable of destroying Israel’s strategic assets in the Negev. It is also actively pressuring Israel not to defend itself against Iran and its proxies. Since the Second Lebanon War last summer, the US has pushed Israel to take no action against Iran’s proxy Hamas on the one hand, while pushing Israel to empower Fatah, which has its own strong ties to Iran and to Hamas, on the other. By pressuring Israel to enact a policy of capitulation toward the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, similar to its capitulation to the Palestinians two years ago in Gaza, the Bush administration is advancing a policy that if implemented all but ensures Iranian control over the outskirts of Jerusalem and Amman.

There are two principal causes of the US’s coolness toward Israel and warm embrace of the Saudis. First, the administration’s failure to achieve its goals in Iraq strengthened the influence of the Saudi’s Cold War proponents. These proponents, led by former secretary of state James Baker’s disciples Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, advance their Saudi-centric agenda while paving the way for a US withdrawal from Iraq without victory. In the Baker camp’s view, the best way to facilitate a pullout is by strengthening the Saudis so that they can perhaps prevent a post-US withdrawal Iraq from devolving into an Iranian colony.

The second cause of the administration’s hostility toward Israel is the Olmert government’s irresolute handling of the Second Lebanon War last year. As was the case 25 years ago, so too last summer, the administration supported Israel against the wishes of the Baker camp. Yet when unlike 25 years ago, last summer the Olmert government led Israel to defeat in Lebanon, it weakened the standing of administration officials who view Israel as a strategic ally and oppose the Saudis, while strengthening Israel’s Baker-inspired foes who view Israel as a strategic liability.

The Olmert government’s enthusiastic embrace of capitulation as a national policy toward the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria merely serves to strengthen the US view that Israel is a strategic liability rather than an asset.

Yet the lessons of the Cold War, and those of the past 15 years remain clear. The Saudis remain at best fair-weather friends to the US, while Israel’s strength or weakness directly impacts US national security and geopolitical interests. As was the case during the Cold War, so too today, the US’s best option for checking Russian and Iranian expansionism and neutralizing Sunni jihadists is to back Israel.

If the US were willing to understand the clear lessons from its Cold War experience in the Middle East, it would not be pushing Israel to weaken itself still further through land giveaways to Iran’s Palestinian proxies. It would not be actively undercutting Israel’s national security by supplying sophisticated weapons to the Saudis. It would be admonishing the Olmert government for its irresponsible behavior and exhorting Israel not to go wobbly because it is needed for the larger fight.

The Army and its Future Combat Systems in Jeopardy

For the Army the the future of combat is already here, and the need for FCS is now. 

The Army is facing a seemingly intractable problem: as it seeks to maintain readiness and adapt its current force to today’s war, it must also build and integrate a modernized, cutting edge force needed for victory in tomorrow’s battles.   

In March testimony before the House Armed Services Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee, the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff, General Richard A. Cody, attributed the start of these problems to what he estimated to be the $100 billion underfunding of Army investment accounts during the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This underfunding created a $56 billion dollar equipment shortage across the Army. Before the Global War on Terror, the Army was able to mitigate declining readiness by transferring equipment from non-deployed elements to units preparing to deploy overseas.  

"This practice, which we are continuing today, increases risk for our next-to-deploy units, and limits our ability to respond to emerging strategic contingencies,” Cody warned.

But with half of its 43 combat brigades deployed overseas and the remainder either recovering from their last tour of duty or preparing for the next deployment, the Army is finding that there is just not enough working equipment to go around. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the extended nature of the current conflict is causing equipment to wear out much faster than originally projected.  And, with a few notable exceptions, the Army’s equipment that is working was designed for combat against a vastly different foe than the one it is now fighting.    The Army understands it is at a crossroads. The time it has to stabilize readiness while it modernizes for the near and long term future is quickly diminishing.  Unfortunately, the plan to do this is in jeopardy.  The cause: proposed House Armed Services Committee budget cuts of $867 million to the plan’s cornerstone, the Future Combat Systems (FCS). No Seemingly Easy or Cheap Solutions 

Modernizing an army during war is seldom easy and never cheap. But, with its system-of-systems modernization approach, branded as FCS, moving from the drawing board to the testing field and its first spin-out of new capability to be integrated with the current force occurring next year, the Army is laying the groundwork for success. 

Being the first effort of the Army to implement a new, ground-up modernization plan for its fighting force in almost four decades, this is a transformation that is long overdue.  Though the Army made due in the past while the “peace dividend” was spent on domestic priorities, the situation has reached the point where, in order to just keep its troops equipped, it must either begin a wholesale recapitalization and update of its current fleet of weapons systems or develop and field FCS.

The cost of either choice remains high; with cumulative costs by 2040 for either option estimated to be over $250 billion. To some, this amount is prohibitively high when added to a defense budget they already claim must be reduced.  In retrospect however, what will be most remarkable to future students of American defense spending will not be how large the budgets were for our current Global War on Terror, but how small they were compared to budgets during the previous three “long wars” (World War II, Korea, Vietnam) or the last decade of the Cold War.

Current U.S. spending of 3.8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense programs  is astonishingly lower than the 38% spent at the close of WWII, the 11.7% spent during the Korean War, the 9.8% spent at the height of the Vietnam War, or the average of 5.2% spent during the last decade of the Cold War.  With FCS estimated to be only 3% of the Army’s total budget, preparing for the near and long term future has never been so cheap.

The Future Requires Leadership Now Even the originator of the FCS cuts, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), realizes that, “The Army is in trouble. It has a serious readiness problem and has massive unfunded bills for repairing equipment damaged in combat, adding more troops to its ranks, and finishing its modular force conversion.”  But at the same time the actions of the HASC indicate that it may not fully appreciate the nature or extent of the Army’s trouble. Picking and choosing parts of FCS to fund, reducing the FY08 FCS budget by twenty-five percent to pay for other unmet Army readiness needs, and targeting for special scrutiny the program management cost which are the very core of the systems’ interoperability, is not Congressional tough love.  These actions more likely reveal a failure to realize just how dire the Army modernization needs are and a lack of understanding of how readiness and modernization interrelate.    In 2000, former Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki first proposed the FCS project in an attempt to make the Army more deployable, networked, jointly synchronized and survivable.  He asked for and received from Congress funding for the Stryker Brigades that would be the leading edge of the Army’s modernization effort and serve as a bridge to the Future Force embodied in FCS.  But, while Stryker has proven its mettle in combat, Congress has now come up short.  Without FCS, the HASC is potentially making the Army’s modernization effort to date into a congressionally built “bridge to nowhere.”        As the Army’s top force planner, Lt. General Stephen Speakes, said last month, “If these cuts stand, it will have a material impact to Future Combat Systems.”  By not investing in the Army’s future now, it is the soldiers who will be most shortchanged, Speakes stressed. “It’s a betrayal of our trust to Americans when we don’t invest in them.”  Going to War with the Army You have Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was roundly criticized in 2004 simply for observing that, "As you know, you have to go to war with the army you have…not the army you might want or wish to have at a later date.”   Since Rumsfeld made this comment in 2004 the Army has worked feverously to create the army it wants, both now and in the future. It has rewritten its counter-insurgency manual, replaced its Cold War doctrine, and updated its training. The Army has also incorporated a myriad of advanced technologies and lessons learned for Iraq and Afghanistan into its Future Combat Systems to meet current needs in the field and to ensure victory in future wars. The proposed FCS cuts if approved could derail much of this progress.  If so, the cuts to FCS should be subjected to as much, if not greater, criticism than Rumsfeld received, for the cuts will not be mere Congressional statements of fact, but a proclamation to the Army that: “You will go to future wars with the army you have now (even though we admit its broken), not the army you should have (even though we admit you need it).”  The Bottom Line

The Army must remain ready to fight even as it transforms, and transform even as it fights. FCS, by adopting an “in-stride” approach to transformation through rapid prototyping, field experimentation, organizational redesign and concept development will ensure our Army remains dominant today and in the future. The Army’s FCS approach is the most effective way to leverage current resources in order to modernize the force and to maintain readiness while investing in programs that extend U.S. military advantages into the future.

Readiness and modernization are two sides of the same coin; Congress can not choose to fund one to the detriment of the other without both suffering. The good news is that doing both will require funding levels far below what the U.S. has spent during earlier wars.  The bottom line however, is that Congress needs to show the leadership on Army modernization it has shown in the past, and fully fund the Future Combat Systems.

 

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The case for hegemony

Peace in the 21st Century will depend on the preponderance of U.S. power.

By Robert T. McLean

On April 30th, the State Department released a report noting a 25% increase in terrorist attacks around the world in 2006, ostensibly signaling the emergence of a period of unparalleled danger.  Indeed, the end of the Cold War did not usher in an era of universal peace, but rather unleashed both rogue regimes and non-state actors to pursue ambitious and destabilizing goals.  Today global hostilities are covered with unprecedented scrutiny magnifying their destruction and expanding the perception that the world has become concurrently more perilous and exceedingly unpredictable.  This has unleashed a nostalgic desire for the simplicity of the past that has now expanded to virtually every corner of the globe. 

The bipolar international structure of the Cold War is often warmly remembered as a time when the balance of power – aided by the commonly understood inevitability of mutual assured destruction – ensured a relatively peaceful world where a war between the superpowers was largely unfeasible.  By contrast, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the threats of international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the instability of the greater Middle East draw many to the deduction that perhaps a multipolar world where no single power maintains hegemony is the preferable path towards a more stable and peaceful future. 

Such judgments have justified, if not formed the basis for, the current strategies of Russia and China to balance the power of the United States.  Russian President Vladimir Putin recently derided Washington’s attempts to create a unipolar world while speaking at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February, as he explained that such actions have led to an increasing number of global conflicts.  Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov clarified Putin’s remarks to Itar-Tass, Russia’s main government news agency, when he noted the following: "We say that a unipolar world does not lead to anything good, there are many times more conflicts now than at the time of the Cold War."  

To be sure, this line of thinking is neither new nor confined to those outside the United States apprehensive of the unquestioned primacy of a single foreign power.  Writing in the Atlantic Monthly in August 1990, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer wrote an essay self-explanatorily titled "Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War."  The central supposition was simple: with the loss of order provided by the structural compositions of the Cold War, a Hobbesian anarchy was destined to shape the future of international relations.  Of course Mearsheimer was not alone in his views.  He has been joined by not only a growing number of "realists" weary of the costs associated with hegemony, but also a different sort of critic represented by the increasing number of anti-American leftists in the United States who are inherently suspicious of American power.

With the growing level of agreement that the United States should abandon its role as world’s lone superpower, some questions must be asked.  May Mearsheimer and his radical leftist counterparts have been right?  Is the Kremlin accurate in its assessment they we have indeed reached a time of unprecedented conflict and global disorder?  A rather simple exploration of history illustrates that, on the contrary to those who disparage the preservation of American hegemony, the world has indeed become significantly more peaceful since the end of the Cold War.

According to data compiled by the University of Maryland, an average of 52.5 wars occurred per decade of the Cold War through 1984.  As a result of those conflicts, an average of nearly 4.6 million people died per decade.  This is hardly peaceful.  By contrast, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Sweden found that state-based conflicts decreased by approximately 40% from 1992 to 2005.  Battle deaths since 1990 make up only a small fraction of those incurred through any decade during the Cold War, and the frequency of attempted military coups has dropped significantly; an average of 12.8 occurred per year between 1962 and 1991, while just 5.9 were attempted per year from 1992 through 2006.  From 1989 to 2005 the number of genocides decreased by 90%. 

A common misperception of the post-Cold War era maintains that while conventional battles between states have decreased, globalization and the deterioration of stability have put civilian lives at risk as the barriers between combatant and civilian have broken down from the growing number terror attacks and civil conflicts.  However, as the authors of the University of British Columbia’s Human Security Brief 2006 noted in their latest annual report: "notwithstanding the increase in terrorist attacks, the number of civilian victims of intentional organized violence remains appreciably lower today than it was during the Cold War years."  Thus, all of the leading indicators – number of wars, battle deaths, civilian lives lost – point to a more peaceful and stable world under American primacy. 

If the confrontation of the Cold War is not a correct paradigm for a peaceful future, perhaps one resembling that of the Concert of Powers and the long held mutual goal of a balance of power that prevailed in Europe between 1815 and 1914 would provide a greater blueprint for the 21st century.  Such a restructuring of the world order has been called for from analysts and commentators as diverse as Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky.  But was the world after the fall of Napoleon until the outbreak of World War I really as peaceful as some of the advocates of balance of power would lead you to believe? 

While a continent-spanning great power conflict was avoided until the outbreak of the First World War, the peace established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 did not last long.  By 1829, the Russo-Turkish War had concluded leaving more than 130,000 dead.  This was not the last time these two powers would go to war as an approximate 200,000 died in further hostilities in 1877 and 1878.  In the meantime, the Russians faced the Polish Insurrection between 1830 and 1831 – they had been granted control of much of Poland at the Congress of Vienna – leaving at least 20,000 dead, while the First Carlist War in Spain ended only after more than 30,000 lost their lives.  The Crimean War of 1854 to 1856 resulted in approximately 300,000 deaths; the Seven Weeks War in 1866 killed 35,000; and by the time the Franco-Prussian War concluded in 1871 more than 200,000 had lost their lives.  Additional competition between the European powers for empire and the influence and resources that go along with it was also not without incident. 

In fact, it was largely the example of the tumultuous environment of 19th century Europe that molded America’s earliest perceptions of a proper security environment.  What was essentially conceived by George Washington and was later refined by John Quincy Adams, American leaders have long sought to avoid entangling the nation in any sort of foreign policy based on balance of power. Expressing his deep seated reluctance for any type of balance of power in the Western Hemisphere, Adams noted in 1811 that were the United States not to emerge as the hegemon of the Americas, "we shall have an endless multitude of little insignificant clans and tribe at eternal war with one another for a rock or a fish pond, the sport and fable of European masters and oppressors."  Multipolarity, in the absence of a global congruence of interests and widespread cooperation, will inevitably lead to such a situation the world over. 

Critics of American efforts to maintain its primacy often point to the economic, political, and military costs associated with such ambition.  These concerns are not without merit, but they also overlook the costs incurred when a peer competitor arises as was the case throughout much of the Cold War.  The average annual percentage of GDP spent on defense during the Cold War was roughly 7% compared to less than 4% since 1991.  Thus, the so-called "peace dividend" would be more appropriately labeled the "primacy dividend" as the United States was not at war at until the collapse of the Soviet Union, but rather was in a costly struggle to outlast a peer competitor. Additional criticisms about the costs in American lives are also unfounded.  During the Cold War an average of about 18,000 American military personnel died as a result of hostile action per decade. Even if we count the civilian lives lost on 9/11, that number has decreased a staggering 83% since 1990.  Finally, the questions of the political consequences incurred as a result of hegemony are, at the minimum, significantly exaggerated.  It was the not so not-aligned Non-Aligned Movement that emerged out of the Cold War, and even "Old Europe" is returning to the acknowledgement that there is a pervasive parallel in values and interests with the United States.

Indeed, any future deterioration of American hegemony would be accompanied by catastrophic consequences.  History reveals that tragic violence inevitably follows newly created power vacuums.  The decline of the Ottoman Empire brought on a massacre of the Armenians, and the end of British rule in India resulted in massive devastation in South Asia.  As was persuasively illustrated in Niall Ferguson’s War of the World, the weakening and contraction of Western empires were indispensable contributors to the unprecedented bloodshed of the 20th century.  Make no mistake, history will repeat itself – beginning in Iraq – should the United States loose its nerve and retract from its responsibilities as the world’s lone superpower.  While it has become fashionable to proclaim that the 21st Century will emerge as the "Asian Century," the United States – and its many allies – should do everything in their powers to insure that we are indeed at the dawn of a new American century.