GailForce: U.S. Defense – End of Year Thoughts

As is the custom for all FPA Bloggers with the year drawing to a close, it’s time for me to give my thoughts on how events fared in 2011. All in all there were a number of defense policy successes, with the most spectacular being the death of Osama Bin Laden, the continued dismantling of Al Qaeda leadership (in 2011 they lost 10 of its top 20 leaders), the halting of Taliban momentum in Afghanistan, the successful NATO operation in Libya, and the end of our military involvement in Iraq. All of these successes coupled with the Obama administration saying our military involvement in Afghanistan will end in 2014 and the continuing economic crisis have many calling for massive cuts to the Department of Defense (DoD) budget.

I don’t believe that the DoD should be untouched, but I have major concerns about the direction and what programs and organizations will bear the brunt of these cuts. When it comes to the topics of crisis and war, the old Yogi Berra quote: “It ain’t over till it’s over” comes to mind. I don’t believe we have yet reached a stage in our human evolution where world peace is possible. Some will say with the death of Bin Laden, major threats to U.S. national security are gone therefore we don’t need a large military anymore. Others say the last few years have shown that future threats to national security will be in areas like terrorism and cyber space, therefore we no longer need a large conventional military force.

I don’t agree. Just in the last day or so Iran has threatened to close the Hormuz Strait, a waterway that around one third of the world’s oil shipments pass through, if new economic sanctions are imposed. The change of leadership in North Korea has also once again bought that nation back on the radar scope reminding people there has never been a peace treaty signed and we are still technically at war with that nation. Both Iran and North Korea are threats that still require conventional military forces to counter.

Some would say are these real threats or simply excuses some who favor a strong military are using as an excuse to avoid major budget cuts? Looking first at Iran as pointed out in a December 28th article in the Washington Post:

“Despite threats to close the narrow waterway if Western nations tighten sanctions on Iran by imposing an oil embargo, the Islamic republic needs the strait at least as much as its adversaries do, Iranian and foreign analysts said…
By undermining Iran’s ability to generate income through oil sales, the United States hopes to force Tehran to abandon its uranium enrichment program, which the Obama administration suspects is secretly aimed at enabling Iran to build nuclear weapons. Iran denies it is trying to build nuclear arms.
The latest furor erupted when Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told students Tuesday that Iran would close the strait in reprisal for any Western sanctions on Iran’s oil exports.
In that case, “not even a drop of oil will flow through the Strait of Hormuz,” Rahimi said, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA). Iran’s navy commander, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, later said that for the nation’s armed forces, closing the strait would be “easier than drinking a glass of water.”…
‘’Does the West expect us to be threatened and attacked and we just surrender?’ asked Ali Akbar Javanfekr, head of IRNA and an unofficial spokesman for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ‘What are our options? Be sure, we can find ways to tackle any sanctions’.”

Some will ask does Iran really have the capability to close down the Strait. The answer is yes; they can mine it or use submarines to sink ships. The advantage to that strategy is plausible denial. Ships would be sunk but unless Iran publicly admits to it you have a situation similar to the one we had when North Korea sank the South Korean Destroyer last year. According to official U.S. statements we’re pretty certain the North Koreans are guilty but since they continue to deny it we can’t go out and attack their Navy without causing a serious crisis in the region. Publicly China remains unconvinced the North Koreans did it, so… well you get my drift.

If the Iranians want to openly close the strait in addition to mines and submarines they have land based cruise missiles and small boats armed with cruise missiles that could be used. I believe the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, home ported in Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, would be able to successfully counter the threat but that could lead to yet another war in the region.

Back to my budget concerns; historically the U.S. tends to down size its military after a war then build it up again when a new war or major crisis develops. The challenge is predicting and/or recognizing a new threat. Osama Bin Laden declared war on the U.S. in 1996. In 1998 Al Qaeda blew up our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, yet it was not until 9/11 that the U.S. threw its full security apparatus at the problem. Terrorism has always been a threat but one that the security establishment had successfully been able to handle. As has been reported in the media, there were a lot of terrorist related successes the general public was not aware. For instance, I remember when I was stationed in Panama in the 1980’s; some group was setting off pipe bombs in rest rooms of night clubs frequented by U.S. soldiers. No one was killed but it was a cause for concern. It was not just terrorism threats, during the Cold War there were many incidents that could have escalated to a war or major crisis but did not because our military forces were a powerful countering force to potential adversaries.

The challenge will be to make cuts to the Defense budget but retain a national security strategy that can successfully respond to any threat. I know that will not be an easy task but if we don’t do it and just make massive cuts we risk leaving ourselves open to another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor type incident. The November/December 2011 issue of Geospatial Intelligence Forum magazine states:

“Intelligence agencies are bracing for about $25 billion in budget cuts over the next 10 years, and top officials are saying this will increase security risks. ‘We’re going to have less capacity in 10 years than we have today,’ said Director on National Intelligence James Clapper, Intelligence officials and policymakers will have to decide whether to pay less attention to some areas so increased emphasis can be placed on other areas. The days of ‘worldwide emphasis’ are over.”

There are a lot of ways to cut the DoD budget without taking major hits in the size of the military force. In October of this year, General Keith Alexander, the head of both NSA and U.S. Cyber Command talked about how NSA had made a 30 – 40% savings in their Information Technology budget by switching to cloud technology. He stated at the start of the process NSA had 900 help desks, now they are down to 450 and plan to go down to 2.

DoD hired a lot of defense contractors to work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many were former and retired military personnel. I always thought this was weird. If they needed the service of former and retired military personnel why not just reactivate them. I was surprised when going through the military retirement paperwork process and found out I was eligible for recall until the age of 65. If you’re already paying me a salary and then I go work for a defense company and you pay them for my services, you’re paying me twice. Does that make any sense?

Think I’ll end with saying who is my Person of the Year: the U. S. Intelligence Community. You have thousands of men and women, many in their late teens and early 20’s who are working 24/7 at all 16 of the intelligence agencies, 17 if you include the Directorate of National Intelligence. They never gave up on finding Bin Laden and continued to work hard in an environment where you get very few pats on the back and lots of criticism from the media and the public. They are continually screening large amounts of data looking for threats. The most recent statistics I have come from a briefing given at the second annual Navy Information Day conference held on March 2, 2011. They have a slide that says:

“It took two centuries to fill the Library of Congress with: 29 million books and periodicals; 2.4 million recordings; 29 million photographs; 2/4 million maps, and 29 million manuscripts. Today that much information is generated every 5 minutes.”

Not only do you have people dealing with analyzing all of the information you also have people developing new and better ways of doing business and developing new weapons and tools. Speaking at the October 2011 GEOINT conference, Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Michael Vickers said the surge in Afghanistan included double the number of intelligence surveillance (ISR) assets we had in Iraq. He said those assets had been nothing short of a game changer and that the Afghan commanders have more ISR capability than any military commander in history. Those assets would be worthless if you did not have capable people operating them and analyzing the data.

That’s it for me. As always my views are my own. Happy New Year!