The Future of the United States Military

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 4/19/2009, at The Unreligious Right

As China continues its cyber attack upon the United States of America, planners might want to rethink its reliance upon drones for battlefield intelligence. Either that, or get their heads out of their butts and do something about China's assault.

Not likely under the current administration.

That silly M1 Abrams wasn't useful at all in the the first Gulf War, was it? Oh wait, it was.

The F-22 was built to counter advanced Russian fighters. We don't need that anymore. The Russians would never sell anything like that to countries hostile towards the western world. Oh wait, they probably would. Well, we probably don't need it anyway. Unless China were to suddenly reveal that they've been working on some new, highly advanced fighter of their own. But, they wouldn't do that, they're our friends. And even if they did develop some next gen fighter, they wouldn't use it or sell it to nations like Iran. Oh wait, yes they would.

Until a major reform or revolution happens in acquisitions, its all irrelevant. We can't acquire any weapons for any war with the way the current system works.

These "low intensity" weapons were supposed to be cheaper then the big cold war toys. That didn't happen. Somewhere between the contractors, the generals, and the congress critters, we wound up with weapons with half the armor, inferior electronics, and four times the price tag. And they are still too big and heavy to cram inside our air trans fleet.

Somedays I think we should dust off some of our old WW2 schematics. New P-47s for AF COIN, new Amtracks and Dukws for marine amphib, and new Shermans for the army when they have to roll through urban environments

I think we should be spending at least 6% (excluding additional spending on active deployments)of our GDP on defense. Right now we are around 4%, possibly less with the coming defense cutbacks.

At a 6% to 8% range, is there any reason the military could not be prepared to fight a conventional foe as well as COIN / low-intensity conflict?

Pre WWII our land forces were small and geared towards actions like pacifying the Philippines and restoring order in Haiti. We paid dearly having to re-arm / retrain to take on Panzers in North Africa and the Imperial army in battles such as Tarawa. We disarmed in the late 1940's expecting nukes to keep us safe. We paid dearly again as our forces were unprepared for Korea.

Then Vietnam came around and the military was ready to fight massive land campaigns on the field of Europe.. but had forgotten its pre-WWII role in COIN. Again, we paid dearly for it.

I wonder if the next major war we find that we won't have the opportunity to 'bounce back' from early setbacks.. leading to an ultimate defeat.

Others argued against the usefulness of the M-1 Abrams tank, a 70-ton behemoth too large to be airlifted into close-quarter battlefields and too heavy to traverse many small bridges."

Evidently these folks didn't read about the Canadians in Afghanistan saying that tanks are the best.

Or the use of tanks in Fallujah.

Just wanted to say HI. I found your blog a few days ago and have been reading it over the past few days.

Spade,

You need not turn to the Canadians to prove the usefulness of the M1 tank. M1 tanks turned the tide on March 23rd in the Marines' fight for the bridges in Nasiriyah and M1 tanks overwhelmed the enemy in Fallujah, saving countless American lives.

On another note regarding the theme of this post; it seems that we are all falling into the classic crevice of fighting the last war. While low-intensity conflict is something the U.S. Military needs to be able to deal with successfully, there are other threats that we need to be prepared to address.

We could have to deal with China's massive Army. We could become entangled in a fight between Pakistan and India. North Korea could attempt another incursion of the South. Russia could try another land grab and war could erupt in the Middle East.

We must be prepared to deal with all these contingencies. Let's look forward.

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