The final Report of the National Defense Strategy Commission delivered a picture of America’s dangerously dwindling military prowess, in the face of dramatic challenges from major adversaries Russia and China. The New York Analysis of Policy and Government continues its presentation of the Executive Summary of the study.
Evaluating the National Defense Strategy
The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), the document this Commission was created to evaluate, represents a constructive first step in responding to this crisis. We support its candid assessment of the strategic environment, the priority it places on preparing for major-power competition and conflict, its emphasis on the enduring value of U.S. alliances and partnerships, and its attention to issues of readiness and lethality. That said, we are concerned that the NDS too often rests on questionable assumptions and weak analysis, and it leaves unanswered critical questions regarding how the United States will meet the challenges of a more dangerous world. We believe that the NDS points the Department of Defense (DOD) and the country in the right direction, but it does not adequately explain how we should get there.
The NDS rightly stresses competition with China and Russia as the central dynamic in sizing, shaping, and employing U.S. forces, but it does not articulate clear approaches to succeeding in peacetime competition or wartime conflict against those rivals. Resource shortfalls, unanticipated force demands, unfilled capability gaps, and other risk factors threaten DOD’s ability to fulfill the central goals of the NDS, such as defeating one major-power rival while maintaining deterrence in other regions. As America confronts five major security challengers across at least three important geographic regions, and as unforeseen challenges are also likely to arise, this is a serious weakness. To meet those intensifying military challenges, DOD will require rapid, substantial improvements to its capabilities built on a foundation of compelling, relevant operational concepts.
Proposed fixes to existing vulnerabilities—concepts such as “expanding the competitive space,” “accepting risk” in lower-priority theaters, increasing the salience of nuclear weapons, or relying on “Dynamic Force Employment”—are imprecise and unpersuasive. Furthermore, America’s rivals are mounting comprehensive challenges using military means and consequential economic, diplomatic, political, and informational tools. Absent a more integrated, whole-of-government strategy than has been evident to date, the United States is unlikely to reverse its rivals’ momentum across an evolving, complex spectrum of competition.
Operational Challenges and Concepts
As regional military balances have deteriorated, America’s advantage across a range of operational challenges has diminished. Because of our recent focus on counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency, and because our enemies have developed new ways of defeating U.S. forces, America is losing its advantage in key warfighting areas such as power projection, air and missile defense, cyber and space operations, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, long-range ground-based fires, and electronic warfare. Many of the skills necessary to plan for and conduct military operations against capable adversaries—especially China and Russia— have atrophied.
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DOD and the Congressional committees that oversee national security must focus current and future investments on operational challenges such as protecting critical bases of operations; rapidly reinforcing and sustaining forces engaged forward; assuring information systems and conducting effective information operations; defeating anti-access/area-denial threats; deterring, and if necessary defeating, the use of nuclear or other strategic weapons in ways that fall short of justifying a large-scale nuclear response; enhancing the capability and survivability of space systems and supporting infrastructure; and developing an interoperable joint command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) architecture that supports the warfare of the future.
The United States needs more than just new capabilities; it urgently requires new operational concepts that expand U.S. options and constrain those of China, Russia, and other actors. Operational concepts constitute an essential link between strategic objectives and the capability and budgetary priorities needed to advance them. During the Cold War, the United States developed detailed operational concepts to overcome daunting challenges in Europe and elsewhere. Innovative concepts are once again needed because Russia and China are challenging the United States, its allies, and its partners on a far greater scale than has any adversary since the Cold War’s end. The unconventional approaches on which others rely, such as hybrid warfare (warfare combining conventional and unconventional elements), gray-zone aggression (coercion in the space between peace and war), and rapid nuclear escalation demand equally creative responses. In other words, maintaining or reestablishing America’s competitive edge is not simply a matter of generating more resources and capabilities; it is a matter of using those resources and capabilities creatively and focusing them on the right things. Unfortunately, the innovative operational concepts we need do not currently appear to exist. The United States must begin responding more effectively to the operational challenges posed by our competitors and force those competitors to respond to challenges of our making.
National Security Innovation Base
Aggressively pursuing technological innovation and introducing those advances into the force promptly will be critical to overcoming operational challenges and positioning the U.S. military for success. We applaud the NDS for emphasizing this issue. We remain concerned, however, that America’s edge is diminishing or has disappeared in many key technologies that underpin U.S. military superiority, and that current efforts to offset that decline are insufficient. For example, as part of a whole-of-society approach to innovation, China is currently making great strides in the race to dominate in key areas such as FifthGeneration Long-Term Evolution (5G LTE) broadband wireless networks. That effort may yield great economic, geopolitical, and military benefits for Beijing—and equally great dangers for the United States.
DOD and the U.S. government more broadly must take additional steps to protect and strengthen the U.S. National Security Innovation Base, perhaps by increasing investment in key industries and pursuing selective economic disintegration with rivals to avoid dangerous dependencies. The Department must also continue broadening its efforts to find and incorporate new capabilities commercially developed by the private sector. Not least, Congress and DOD must find new ways of enabling more rapid maturation, acquisition, and fielding of leap-ahead technologies. For two decades, the emphasis for defense programs has been on process and efficiency—navigating smoothly through the acquisition system—rather than on optimizing them for innovation and warfighting effectiveness. This has led to a situation in which innovation occurs outside of government, and those innovations are increasingly difficult for our defense processes to access quickly, if at all. One way of addressing this problem would be to explore a new, narrowly tailored category of acquisition pilot programs that would accept greater cost and risk in pursuit of speed and the game-changing technological breakthroughs necessary to sustain U.S. military advantages.
The Report Continues Tomorrow
Photo: F-15D Eagle piloted by Col. Jeff Smith, 173rd Fighter Wing commander (U.S. Air Force)