Land Warrior in Iraq

Major props go to Noah Schachtman, who took time out of a busy schedule of alternatively living in Ba'athist palaces and sleeping in fetid kitchens to look in on how the tech demonstrators from the now-cancelled Land Warrior are doing:

Captain Jack Moore, the commander of the 4/9's "Blowtorch" company, peers into his Land Warrior monocle. Inside is a digital map of Tarmiyah, a filthy little town about 25 kilometers north of Baghdad that's become a haven for Islamists. Blue icons show two of his platoons sweeping through the western half of the town. Two other icons represent Blowtorch soldiers who have teamed up with special forces and Iraqi Army units to raid local mosques with insurgent ties.

A red dot suddenly pops up on Moore's monocle screen: 3rd platoon has found a pair of improvised bombs -- black boxes, filled with homemade explosives. Other troops will circumvent the scene.

As the other platoons move south to north, green lights blink on Moore's map. Each of these "digital chem lights" represents a house checked and cleared. It keeps different groups of soldiers from kicking down the same set of doors twice.

A year ago, these chem lights weren't even part of the Land Warrior code. But after a suggestion from a Manchu soldier, the digital markers were added -- and quickly became the system's most popular feature. During air assaults on Baquba, to the northeast, troops were regularly dropped a quarter or half-kilometer from their original objective; the chem lights allowed them to converge on the spot where they were supposed to go. In the middle of one mission, a trail of green lights was used to mark a new objective -- and show the easiest way to get to the place.

[snip]

[Capt. Aaron] Miller is still not happy with how much the system weighs. "Look, I need this like I need a 10th arm," he sighs. And all this stuff (Land Warrior does), my cell phone basically does the same at home." But Miller is committed to soldiers being networked. So he's willing to be the digital guinea pig. "It's got to start with someone."

The system has become more palatable to the Manchus because it's been pared down, in all sorts of ways. By consolidating parts, a 16-pound ensemble is now down to a little more than 10. A new, digital gun scope has been largely abandoned by the troops -- the system was too cumbersome and too slow to be effective. And now, not every soldier in the 4/9 has to lug around Land Warrior. Only team leaders and above are so equipped.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised how accurately my concerns about the Land Warrior played out on the battlefield. The blue force tracking and land navigation functions are very popular, while the computing and scope pieces were largely relegated to the rubbish bin.

Complaints that the system would better if it were only a quarter of its current weight also indicate that either the underlying technology is not mature enough or that the designers crammed it with superfluous features. I'm going to bet that the latter is a far more likely culprit than the latter -- especially considering how many weapons systems in the pipe feel disconnected from current needs.

The most ironic bit of Capt. Miller's comment about how his cellphone back at home does many of the same functions as the Land Warrior. That sounds a lot like the result of this JASONS report issued two years ago, which theorized that adapting commercial communications platforms to military use might be a better method of improving situational awareness at the lowest levels.

This brings us to something I have been thing about since I read this Defense News piece on how the DoD is effectively hiring a lead system integrator to support their counternaroctics efforts. If there is little evidence that DoD bureaucrats can successfully plan and develop successful weapons platforms for the U.S. military, why shouldn't we be outsourcing large chunks of the acquisition process?

You can at least terminate contractors when it is clear they cannot deliver on the terms of their contract. The same cannot be said about the thousands of 'acquisition professionals' who are barely doing their job right now.

Air Force going out of business?

My one-sentence interpretation of Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne's speech last week:

My service made bad force planning decisions in the mid-to-late 1990s that have made it increasingly irrelevant. I blame everyone but the Air Force.

I love how Wynne focuses his lamentations on the Air Force's offensive air-to-air capabilities, but doesn't mention its other roles -- specifically strategic airlift and close air support.

In a way, the Air Force is paying for its role as the dominant military service in the 1950s and 1960s. It took a much larger portion of the budget back then, which allowed it to fund some of their most impressive and enduring aircraft: B-52, C-5, C-130, AC-130, A-10, and F-15. Fortunately, it looks like the Air Force invested in airframes that have withstood the test of time, both in terms of performance and utility.

It makes one wonder whether the F-22 or F-35 will still be relevant as long as the B-52 has.

FCS Follies, Part 1

In a fit of boredom a few months ago, I wrote a briefing paper outlining what I saw as handful of critical issues related to network-centric warfare that need to reconciled before the Army starts fielding Future Combat Systems. I was planning to hold it until right before I left for the State Department, mostly to avoid becoming persona non grata at PM FCS.

One of my coworkers stumbled upon my two-pager back in May and unbeknownst to me, passed it up to the FCS folks with his name on it. After straightening out the plagiarism issue, FCS sent me a polite, but dismissive 'mind your own business' e-mail. Needless to say, I think I was taken off their Christmas card list.

During this whole affair, my boss was sent a copy of the paper and his reaction was much more positive. He suggested expanding the paper by including some solutions to these issues. I've decided to test each of these expanded ideas on my readers. Here is part 1:

"Lit up like Christmas Trees"

Soon after the summer 2006 skirmish between Israel and Hezbollah concluded, claims surfaced that Hezbollah managed to hack into the IDF's U.S.-made SINCGARS radios. It turned out that Hezbollah hadn't actually hacked the radios, but instead used a bank of modified radio scanners to track the electromagnetic emissions of IDF units.

This example points to a key vulnerability of the network-centric model, namely its vulnerability to electronic warfare support. In order to provide the kind of real-time data exchange and blue force tracking capabilities envisioned in FCS, the density of wireless communication will have to expand manifold.

Individual units and soldiers will not only be swapping a wider variety of tactical information, they will also be giving off a constant amount of positional data. They will be lit up like Christmas trees adorned in intense, but invisible lights. Each tank, truck and soldier will be a beacon of electromagnetic radiation that can be intercepted, triangulated and tracked.

Since it was playing defense on familiar territory, Hezbollah didn't need to crack the IDF's radios to carry out effective operations. They knew where their resources and units were located, so it was only a matter of triangulating IDF locations and feeding the information to nearby assets.

A future reduction in the cost and complexity of compact anti-radiation guidance packages for indirect-fire munitions would pose an even bigger threat to a network-centric force. If a simply seeker package just doubled the accuracy of the simple artillery rockets and mortars favored by insurgents, it could lead to serious casualties. Tactical network hubs will be easy targets at the very least.

There is no easy solution to this problem because it exploits the most indispensable part of network-centric warfare, the network itself. Lasers are the only wireless media that do not 'leak' a traceable amount of electromagnetic radiation, but it requires line of sight. DARPA has been contemplating a laser-based work-around for blue-force tracking called 'Dynamic Optical Tags' or DOTS for short.

In the DOTS system, each vehicle and soldier would be equipped with a tag that functions as a passive light modulator. When the tag's receiver is struck by an encoded laser signal, it modulates the beam to pack it with new information and reflects it back at the point of transmission. A powered version of this process could be used as a two-way interface between the tag and the light source.

This system would still be limited to line of sight and would have to mounted to an UAV (a blimp maybe?), but it would very difficult to intercept and track.

Memo to BG Mike Brogan

In response to Marine Brigadier-General Mike Brogan's comment that press coverage is inflaming insurgent interest and turning the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle into a 'symbolic target,' I have the following response:

BG Brown is forgetting one issue, namely that dead soldiers are the 'symbolic targets' that the insurgents are actually after. Getting the insurgents to concentrate their attention on the handful of MRAPs that will enter the arsenal over the next year will take some pressure off targeting the more plentiful up-armored HMMWV.

That will undoubtedly save lives and saving lives is the only reason why the public is allowing the Pentagon to grossly mismanage the MRAP program with few consequences. What he is really concerned about is looking bad when we drop $20 billion on a gas-guzzling monster of a wheeled transport that only offers a marginal advantage in protection.

In a sense, the MRAP is symbolic -- it is a symbol of the military's complete inability to recognize that peace-enforcement and peacekeeping have been very common military operations since the end of the Cold War. In order to make up for the two years we spent in Iraq without a cogent counterinsurgency manual or effective military strategy, they are dropping a huge wad of cash to field a weapons system at the 11th hour that isn't even really ready.

Don't get me wrong, I feel strongly that we should issue our troops with gear that will provide them with a generous amount of protection. My heart is always crushed when I see those poor wounded vets that come by the Pentagon every week.

I just think the Pentagon's acquisition strategy over the last six years has been to schizophrenically jump from one technology to the next in search of silver bullets. As a result, we let the insurgents set the technological tempo in Iraq, forcing the U.S. military to expend a premium of blood and treasure playing catch-up.

Why am I so incensed by this issue? Because I know that folks in the Army Secretariat periodically examined the issue of mine-protected vehicles going back to at least 2002. Instead of dusting off the concept in 2003 or 2004, the Pentagon blindly focused on IED jammers instead of simple armor issues.

But hey, I'm the crazy one, remember. Someone get me a straitjacket and a comfy padded room.

Pimp my F-35

In response to Noah's challenge, I tricked out the interior and exterior of the Joint Strike Fighter using the standard "Pimp My Ride" formula: Add a frivolous multimedia center to the interior...

...and cover the exterior with an obnoxious, brightly-colored pattern.

I considered putting some high-gloss faux-woodgrain panels in the interior, but there is literally too much crap in the cockpit for such a Photoshop feat to be worthwhile.

AEGIS to Taiwan, not a stretch

The top story at TaiwanSecurity.org a few days ago was about possible Taiwanese plans to buy AEGIS cruisers of the U.S.:

Taiwan wants to buy at least six Aegis-equipped destroyers from the United States at a cost of more than $4.6 billion, a newspaper said on Monday, a plan sure to anger China which claims the island as its own.

The United Daily News quoted unnamed sources as saying Deputy Defense Minister Ko Cheng-heng and Chief of the General Staff Chen Yung-kang would travel to the United States this month to try to secure the deal.

The defense ministry declined to comment.

The navy could eventually buy an additional two destroyers after the initial six depending on the circumstances, the newspaper said.

The Aegis air defense radar and weapons system is capable of tracking and attacking dozens of missiles, aircraft and ships all at once.

The United States, the island's main arms supplier, in 2001 put off a request from Taipei to buy four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis system, but kept the option open should China pose a sufficient threat.

Sudden announcements of Taiwanese intent to purchase major arms packages from the U.S. is certainly not unheard of. The Armchair Admiral over at Information Dissemination is correct to greet this news with a healthy dose of skepticism. He is also right to point out that the Navy doesn't exactly have surplus Arleigh-Burkes to sell the Taiwanese.

Normally, I would agree with the assessment that this AEGIS announcement is just another example of Taiwanese politicians playing politics with their defense budget. Not on this though. I think the Taiwanese want to get their hands on two of the four U.S. Block I AEGIS cruisers stationed in the Pacific. Armchair Admiral dismisses them because they have been reconfigured for ballistic missile defense, but I would argue that is the core reason for Taiwanese interest in the ships.

What is my basis for defying conventional wisdom? A conversation that emerged during a Presidential Management Fellows job interview I had at the Missile Defense Agency. Here is a rough dramatization of the conversation:

Robot Economist: So what would you think is the major drawback of working for the MDA? The political sensitivity of the work?

Female MDA Official With Too Much Eye Shadow: That is problematic to a certain extent, but right now, I would say being BRAC'd to Huntsville. We've been having trouble keeping young people who want to stay in the DC area.

RE: Are you going to staff any embassies or international field offices? Possibly some in Asia?

FMDAWTMES: Yes, we definitely will. The only one we have planned for the Pacific will be in Taipei.

RE: Wait, you mean Tokyo, right? The Japanese should get one since they are going to be such a big partner.

FMDAWTMES: No, I meant Taipei, in Taiwan.

After stifling a double-take, I let the issue drop -- but as you can imagine, those words have been stuck in the back of my mind for months. I can't find any specific evidence to support this odd conversation, but this March 2006 briefing by MDA chief Lt. General Trey Obering does indicate that Taiwan is on their radar (pardon the pun).

This is one thing that I am definitely going to keep my eye one.

So what's up with these Near East arms deals?

One news item from recent headlines is Bush administration's plans to build up a tighter anti-Iran block in the Near East through arms deals. Specifically, they plan to sell at least $20 billion worth of arms to the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), as well as increase the amount of military aid given to Israel and Egypt.

Before I critique the Bush administration's approach, I would like to correct a common misunderstanding about U.S. arms sales to the Near East. First of all, the U.S. sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to GCC states on an annual basis. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, Saudi Arabia purchased $5.8 billion worth of defense articles and services through the Foreign Military Sales system. We also signed off on direct commercial sales of $1.8 billion worth of U.S. defense articles and services to the Saudis as well. (Both FMS and DCS numbers compiled from annual reports, send me an e-mail if you want them in a spreadsheet.)

The Bush administration is proposing that we relax some of the limitations we have placed on the types of weapons the U.S. can sell to Saudi Arabia. To be fair, some of these restrictions were based on tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, so relaxing them now makes sense in the face of recent Arab-Israeli detente. If we're going to sell arms to the GCC states anyways, we might as well sell them as much as we can for practical economic reasons, if not strategic ones. As one Navy-focused blogger points out, if the Saudis can't buy more advanced weaponry from the United States, there are plenty of other relatively advanced arms exporting states willing to fill the gap.

The real flaw of this decision is that it will probably do nothing to achieve its intended goal of adjusting the military balance between the GCC states and Iran. As Bill Arkin aptly points out, the Saudis and their GCC neighbors aren't planning on buying the advanced weapons we are offering in large enough quantities to be useful. His point about the drivers and limitations behind Saudi procurement planning is particularly important. The Saudis will only buy enough JDAMs, F-16s and M1A2s to keep their prince-generals happy. They cannot buy enough to become a force of reckoning the Near East because they afraid of making their military too powerful.

If you take a look at the publicly available Function 150 sales toplines published by the State Department, there appears to be some evidence of this. The Saudis averaged about $700-800 million in arms purchases between 2000 and 2006. If you look at the 655 Reports that the Federation of American Scientists obtained for these years, the largest portion of annual Saudi purchases are for defense services (i.e. maintenance, logistics, administration, training, etc.).

Even though this $20 billion deal will effectively double Saudi spending on arms imports, I am sceptical about how much of this spending will actually go to platforms. History doesn't paint an optimistic picture. If the arms sales only serve as a window dressing on the U.S. side (subject to interpretation) of the military balance across the Persian Gulf and if al Qaeda uses U.S. arms sales to House of Saud as a justification for its mission, then why sell them arms to begin with? The only reason I can think of is that we really have viable alternative.

Our hands are tied by decades of 'lowest common denominator' policy-making capped off by the invasion of Iraq and the complete collapse of the Bush administration's freedom agenda.

Oh well, just add the Near East to the list of Baby-Boomer legacies that my generation will spend their entire careers trying to fix.

Defense LOLs - 31 July 2007

This quote is from a Boston Globe puff piece on the Navy's $3 billion-a-pop DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyers:

Its challenge will be to orchestrate the medley of technologies produced by more than 700 suppliers in 40 states while avoiding the cost overruns that have plagued past Navy shipbuilding programs. "Cost realism is important," said Edward Geisler, the Raytheon vice president and program manager for the Zumwalt class destroyers.

lol. Now pull the other one. This guy must have taken notes from the Northrup Grumman when they made the B-2 -- better yet, from Boeing and Future Combat Systems.

My take on the JIEDDO paper

Now that I'm finally free of the Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command (or as my office calls it, the kiddie pool), I wanted to discuss JIEDDO in light of the research paper written by Colonel William Adamson for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.

To be completely honest, I started reading Col. Adamson's paper (available here) in the hopes of finding evidence to further my argument that JIEDDO is wasting money by being overly focused on gadgets designed to counter improvised explosive devices (IED). Instead of finding more proof the caricature, I was surprised to find that this insider's history of JIEDDO went beyond caricature into a study of the DoD's various cultures.

From Col. Adamson's description, the genesis of JIEDDO was nothing like the organization it is today. Both the Army and Marine Corps initially responded to the use of IEDs as a matter for explosive ordanance disposal (EOD) specialists. The Corps' Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell and the Army's IED Task Force focused on enhancing the EOD capabilities of individual units by assigning EOD specialists and collecting and disseminating lessons learned from the field. This was mostly a function performed by and for the soldiers in the field.

Everything changed in 2004 when General John Abizaid, then commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), wrote a personal letter to Donald Rumsfeld asking for the Pentagon to sponsor a 'Manhattan-like Project' to counter IEDs. This marked the decline of the EOD approach used by troops in the field and the rise of what Adamson calls the 'Title 10' approach.

For those not familiar with how the U.S. government bureaucracy works, the attitudes and direction of each agency or department is defined by the U.S. Code. Title 10 is the title governing the missions and authorities of the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military departments. What Adamson is referring to is the statutory mission of each military department, which is to train, equip and supply the armed forces of the United States. To this end, the military departments tend to solve military issues with procurement or recuitment strategies because they are more in keeping with their mission.

So when the fruit of these early steps were handed off to a Joint IED Defeat Task Force and Joint Integrate Process Team (JIPT), the Pentagon naturally shifted its focus to technological solutions. This undercut comprehensive and aggressive efforts to counter IEDs in three ways:

First, doctrinal innovation took a back seat to technological innovation, even though it is easier and cheaper. There is a reason why 'doctrine' comes 3 letters before 'materiel' in DOTMLPF -- enough said.

Second, there was a tension between the Pentagon, CENTCOM and unit commanders over the completeness and efficacy of IED solutions. CENTCOM wanted to push anything that had at least a 51% success rate out to the troops, where as Pentagon acquisition folks wanted to only hand out robust, 'turnkey' solutions. The acquisition wasn't the only point of resistance though because unit commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were wary to use unproven technology.

Finally, the technology-focused approach treated IEDs like the problem when they really were only a symptom of lawlessness and ineffectual governance. The billions poured into technology might have had a greater impact if they were focused on improving Iraqi police or the Iraqi judicial system.

Col. Adamson concludes the paper by arguing that JIEDDO's effectiveness would be enhanced by greater interagency cooperation. In his defense, the good colonel brings up plenty of instances where JIEDDO reached out to other elements of the U.S. government for assistance and, not surprisingly, they were turned away in most instances. He proposes overcoming this problem by establishing an IED 'integration center' that is strikingly similar to the National Counter-Terrorism Center. Building such a center would allow the U.S. government to shift away from its focus on countering IEDs to predicting and preventing them by blending intelligence, military and law enforcement action.

This approach has two key weaknesses:

1. It still treats IEDs like the problem instead of a symptom. Wouldn't an interagency coordinator or process focused on building Iraqi governance capacity ultimately be just as effective at stopping IEDs? Or for that matter, what about simply pouring more resources into rounding up loose munitions and explosives? Recent efforts to go after the IED production and deployment process has forced some bomb-makers to resort to cruder designs, including ANFO-based truckbombs.

2. It trips on the common source of all failed interagency efforts -- poor resource allocation. The reason why many of the other elements of the U.S. government couldn't sign up to assist JIEDDO is because they couldn't afford to take resources away from their own missions. The FBI and ATF are staffed to deal with domestic threats within the context of the United States. They are only given enough resources to handle a narrow set of operations and in practice, they rely heavily on the support of state and local police forces. It would probably easier for the DoD to build up its capacity to police, investigation and dispose of bombs than it would be to bring external law enforcement resources to bear. The Intelligence Community is the same way -- it can't be expected to divert day-to-day collection and reporting resources away from the strategic missions it must support.

Col. Adamson should be very proud of himself -- his paper is a well-written history of bureaucracy and organizational adaptation. If the process wasn't so personality-driven, I would recommend it as a case study for anyone interesting in organizational behavior. His proposals are innovative and very detailed, but unfortunately, even the most innovative bureaucracy can't make up for problems caused by contradictions and deficiencies in U.S. foreign policy.

DRMS just can't win

As I hinted at back in January, Congress is learning that it can't have it both ways with the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service:

Of roughly $1.8 billion worth of equipment the Defense Department downgraded to scrap from January through June, at least $330 million worth came from categories of gear the Pentagon most frequently buys back from surplus dealers, according to the National Association of Aircraft & Communication Suppliers. Those include parts for aircraft, weapons and communications systems, the group said.

The association, a lobbying group for surplus dealers, is worried the military's recent decision to shred retired F-14 "Tomcat" fighter jets is the start of a broader effort to destroy Pentagon leftovers that surplus dealers once bought routinely. Iran is aggressively seeking F-14 components for its own aging Tomcat fleet.

[snip]

Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., wrote to Lt. Gen. Robert Dail, director of the Defense Logistics Agency, asking whether surplus equipment is being scrapped, including new items such as Camelbak backpack-style hydration packs.

"I have received reports that usable items such as sleeping bags and gloves, and auto parts such as mufflers, are being scrapped because DRMS has stated that it is unable to identify them," Shadegg wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. The DRMS is the Pentagon's Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service.

Shadegg said he also is concerned about the loss of government revenue from surplus sales and about harm to small businesses in the surplus industry.

Contrast this with what Representatives Shays had to say about DRMS back in January:

"The military should not sell or give away any sensitive military equipment. If we no longer need it, it needs to be destroyed - totally destroyed," said Shays, until this month the chairman of a House panel on national security. "The Department of Defense should not be supplying sensitive military equipment to our adversaries, our enemies, terrorists."

Shadegg's interest isn't too surprising, considering that DRMS's main contractor, Government Liquidity LLC is located in the Pheonix suburb of Scottsdale. A quick check of Arizona's Congressional map puts Scottsdale inside Shadegg's 3rd District.

Aside from Shadegg's personal political interest in DRMS sales, I do agree with his sentiment as a fellow taxpayer. The Department of Defense should try to recoup some of its costs by surplusing excess or antiquated hardware -- but that's just me.

I can also see why the DRMS folks are taking the cautious route by choosing to scrap a larger percent of their surplus. Sure, Camelbaks, binoculars and boots seem like fairly innocuous items, but if they are "specifically designed, developed, configured, adapted, or modified for a military application," they may be classified as defense articles under part § 120.3 of the International Trafficking in Arms Regulation.

When it comes to items that have commercially-available equivalents, defense article determinations are up to State Department policy wonks and Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators. There are often few publicly available guidelines for this grey area, so it is easy to see why DRMS is choosing to err on the side of caution by scrapping everything that raises questions.

None of this is the fault of DRMS, State or ICE. Each agency is simply doing its job in an ambiguous legal environment. This isn't a hard problem to solve either. Congress just needs to decide whether recouping some of the DoD's annual price tag is as important as maintaining the current export control regime and then pick one or the other. Its not realistic for the Congress to simply assume that bureaucrats or their contractor minions can overcome these conflicting priorities.

A problem like this requires a political solution crafted by elected officials. Heck, its what we hire them to do.

Update: Reader Tom T. suggests a third route, "Let Shays and Shadegg settle their dispute over DRMS in a bare-knuckle boxing match on the House floor." Normally, I would throw my support behind such a proposal, but I'm afraid the House's Sergeant at Arms would end up indicted like Mike Vick. Zing!

Second Update: J and a few other readers familiar with Scottsdale, Arizona were quick to point out that most of the town is actually located in the 5th Congressional district. Having more than a passing familiarity with that area myself, I looked into the matter shortly after reading the military.com article cited above. With the aid of Scottsdale's Chamber of Commerce and the Congressional districts layer of Google Earth, I discovered that Government Liquidation is indeed in the 3rd distrct by a few hundred feet. Here is a screen capture (the red line is district border):

Not exactly a 'chick magnet'

While looking for a funny picture to photoshop for my upcoming C4ISR post, I ran across this picture of an Advanced Helmet Mounted Display:

I'm sure it is pretty useful for virtual simulations, I just don't think it would ever show up in a sequel to Top Gun or even Fire Birds.

Ummm...

I will write a longer piece on Barry Rosenberg's cover article from the July issue of AFJ in the next 24 hours. First, I wanted to highlight an ironic sentence that clearly deserves the label pentagonism:

Third, the commander must set the rules of engagement. On the military side, such rules might be "don't fire unless fired upon" or "don't bust down doors in a culture that finds that tactic extremely insulting."

I don't know about you all, but I imagine most people, regardless of culture, would probably feel insulted by having their door busted down -- especially by a bunch of well-armed foreign soldiers. Somehow, I don't think the 12,000 M100 Grenade Rifle Entry Munitions that the Army is going to buy from Rafael will be popular either.

So why Azerbaijian and does it matter?

I imagine that by now, most of my readers have had a chance to read Noah Shachtman's piece on FCS and Azerbaijan. For those who have not, I will summarize: As part of the Operational Requirements Document used to justify the efficacy of Future Combat Systems, the Army prepared a summary mission profile for a hypothetical set of missions. These hypothetical missions just happen to take place in the oil-rich former Soviet state and now Republic of Azerbaijan.

At this point, some of my readers are probably asking themselves: "Azerbaijan, is that like where Borat goes for summer vacation or something? Why did the Army pick that place?" To be certain, Azerbaijan wasn't selected for political reasons. Azerbaijan isn't exactly the most democratic ex-Soviet state, but the government of President Ilham Aliyev is pretty friendly with the United States. Plus, the U.S oil firm Unocal (now part of Chevron) also owns about a 9% stake in the $3.6 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

Azerbaijan may be a friend, but is one of the roughest and most volatile neighborhoods in the world. The Azeris and the Armenians fight over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Georgians and the Russians fight over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and the Armenians and the Turks fight over whether the Ottoman Empire committed genocide against ethnic Armenians in 1915-1917 (I am definitely not going to wade into that one). To top that off, all of this strife crammed into a small mountainous region sandwiched between Iran and Chechnya. Sometimes I'm surprised that countries stopped bickering long enough to allow the 1776 kilometer Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan pipeline get off the drawing board.

Small, U.S.-friendly, oil-producing state locked in a far-off, volatile region of the world. Doesn't that sound like another country in the Near East, one that we've successfully liberated before? Kuwait perhaps?

In my view, Azerbaijan was picked because its size, terrain, and political environment fit the assumptions that shape FCS. They picked a relatively small country to accentuate the ability of a single FCS Brigade Combat Team to rapidly achieve "decisive maneuver" against a larger opposing force in 48-60 hours. Azerbaijan is also a relatively remote, mountainous area bordered by few U.S. allies. This reflects the Army's emphasis on performing combat operations on short notice and without pre-positioned equipment. Finally, there is the potential (however remote) that the Army may be called upon to one day liberate the Azeris from an encroaching neighbor. Remind anyone of an incredibly successful "left-hook" the Army pulled off a little more than 15 years ago?

My main concern with the Azerbaijan scenarios is that they highlight a fundamental flaw of FCS. This billion-dollar force recapitalization project is focused on refining existing capabilities at a time when the Army needs to develop entirely new capabilities. To me, being able to successfully conduct stability operations campaign the day after a 72 hour blitzkrieg is worth far more than shaving that blitzkrieg down to 48 hours. Does the Army honestly expect a brigade of 4000 troops trained and equipped for maneuver warfare against a modern opposing army to manage 8 million people spread over a country the size of Maine? We have multiple brigades in Baghdad (a city of 7 million) and they can't even keep the peace without support from the Iraqi military.

At the very least, one would hope that as soon as images of the National Carpet Museum in Baku being looted by anonymous brigands are splashed across CNN the hypothetical Secretary of Defense overseeing one of these imagined combat operations would have something more conciliatory to say than 'Stuff happens.'

I'm not saying the Army doesn't need to recapitalize the force and I'm not exactly opposed to the idea of network-centric warfare either. I'm just arguing that the Army's vision of the future force is shackled by a set of overly narrow assumptions about what kind of wars it will fight. As Colin Gray asked in a great monograph published by the Army War College back in 2005, if the Army is putting all of its development dollars into FCS, is FCS robust enough to counter the broadest set of future war scenarios? In terms of fighting a major urban counterinsurgency campaign (Iraq) or managing a fractured, poor state (Afghanistan), I think the evidence is pointing towards 'no.'

Arkin on defense posture: "Toys speak louder than words"

My readers will rejoice at this temporary reprieve from the impending post on export controls. I just have to respond to Bill Arkin's latest blog post celebrating the symbolic meaning of Ohio-class Trident submarines:

This officer's unhappiness, I submit, is not with the submarine but with our overall predicament: the way the war in Iraq has inflamed so much hate and put so many Americans in harm's way with no decent strategy for victory. In reality, we are involved in an ancient man-to-man battle with a well-motivated enemy. This is a battle we cannot win, at least the way we are fighting it, because our technologically oriented, electronically agile, modern nation is not willing to commit the same manpower -- that is, to sink to the level of barbaric attrition.

Still, this officer's Trident is doing more to counter terrorism than the boots on the ground are. Not because it can lob nukes at anyone, and certainly not because it can counter terrorists under some Strangelovian WMD scenario. Its power is more symbolic: It represents the true superpower. It is a quiet and unobtrusive behemoth that no one else can hope to own and everyone is a bit in awe of -- even if they won't admit it.

Think of the sub as a kind of "mansion on the hill." We drive by it and wonder what it would be like to live there, to have that amount of money. If its owners are good neighbors and not too ostentatious, if they contribute to the community and don't swagger around town arrogantly, we don't get too jealous. If someone breaks into their house, we don't say they deserve it (nor do we call out the Army to rid the county of all house thiefs). We may even shake our heads when the mansion's owners decide not to press charges, and feel a little sad when we see contractors installing a new security system.

My correspondent's submarine is that mansion. The struggle for hearts and minds that we all pay lip service to is not some distant and high-tech information war. It begins at home.

Before 9/11, I would have never thought the military needed more Trident submarines. Now, however, I see their value: Quietly patrolling, threatening no one directly, occupying no one's soil, they help to keep order. And they send a powerful message that says we all have no choice but to play by certain rules and respect each other.

Arkin is on to something, but I think his concluding argument is slightly off the mark. The Ohio-class does have an awesome symbolic power about it, but it is not the benevolent masion on a hill to our allies.

To Arkin, the United States is a hegemony that commands the attention and friendship of its neighbors simply because it is powerful and benevolent. This makes it easy for countries to bandwagon with U.S. policy because the U.S. is both strong and non-threatening. The problem is that this is a false image. Even before the birth of American internationalism after World War II, the intentions of U.S. foreign policy have rarely been benevolent.

So why do we have so many allies? In most cases, our long-standing alliances are the result of a substantial sacrifice on the part of the U.S. Those Tridents that Arkin has fondly meditated on are part of that sacrifice. They represent how much the United States was willing to expend to ensure the security of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. They not only represent the cost of the U.S. was willing to pay in their defense (nuclear holocaust), it also represents the billions we sacrificed to 'deter' Soviet aggression with a superior fighting force.

The problem is that those days are long gone and despite its quiet majesty, the Ohio-class is still a waste of money. In the age of the Internet, the easiest and cheapest way to generate the same sense of sacrifice is to invest in peacekeeping forces. The culturally-adroit, lightly-equipped peacekeeping force that we need to win hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan is exactly the same kind of force that would generate good will in the post-Cold War/post 9-11 world.

The aggregate level of threat to the U.S. and its allies are quantitatively lower today than during the Cold War. Ponying up the cash needed to build fancy weapons platforms and operate them far from home is no longer enough to impress allies and friendly nations. The sacrifice needs to be bigger. We now need to show we're laying American lives on the line for international security.

Romney/Obama Foreign Affairs essay roundup

The much talked-about July/August issue of Foreign Affairs arrived in the mail yesterday. It features essays on foreign policy from 2008 presidential candidates Barak Obama and Mitt Romney.

Both essays were pretty weak, but Romney's was just atrocious. If there is one reason for you to vote against him, let it be the contradiction between his description of the "defining challenge of our generation":

In the current conflict, the balance of forces is not nearly as close as during the early days of World War II and at critical points during the Cold War. There is no comparison between the economic, diplomatic, technological, and military resources of the civilized world today and those of the terrorist organizations and states that threaten it. Perhaps most important is the incredible resourcefulness of the American people and their unmatched education, inventiveness, and dedication. But today's threats are fundamentally different from those we grew used to confronting during World War II and the Cold War. Our enemies now have sleeper cells rather than armies. They use indiscriminate terror rather than tanks. Their soldiers -- as well as their victims -- include children. They count radical clergy among their generals. They communicate via the Internet. They recruit in schools, houses of worship, and prisons. They pursue nuclear weapons not as a strategic deterrent but as an offensive tool of terror.

And his first policy prescription:

The Bush administration has proposed an increase in defense spending for next year. This is an important first step, but we are going to need at least an additional $30-$40 billion annually over the next several years to modernize our military, fill gaps in troop levels, ease the strain on our National Guard and Reserves, and support our wounded soldiers. Looking at military spending over time as a percentage of GDP provides an interesting perspective. During World War II, the United States made huge sacrifices, investing more than a third of its economic activity to fight the war. As we confronted different enemies, such as those in Korea, our investment in defense responded accordingly. Since then, slowly but surely, it has decreased significantly. Through the buildup under President Reagan, it reached six percent of GDP in 1986 and helped turn the tide against the Soviet Union. Yet during the Clinton years, defense spending was dangerously reduced. More recently, although spending has increased, less than four percent of our GDP has been devoted to baseline defense spending. These ebbs and flows stemming from political dynamics have increased the costs and the uncertainty of our military preparedness.

The next president should commit to spending a minimum of four percent of GDP on national defense. Increased spending should not mean increased waste, however. A team of private-sector leaders and defense experts should carry out a stem-to-stern analysis of military purchasing. Accounts need to be thoroughly scrutinized to eliminate excessive contractor and supplier charges and prevent deals for equipment and programs that do more for politicians' popularity in their home districts than for the nation's protection. Congress needs to set stricter lobbying rules and keep a far more watchful eye on self-serving politicians, current and past, in regard to these matters.

So even though we completely outmatch the terrorists in resources and ingenuity, we have to grossly outspend them as well? I'd also like to see him try to enforce fiscal discipline on the military and the Congress. Let it be known that fighting the defense establishment can hazardous to the health of your SecDef. The rest of the essay is pretty incoherent and clearly demonstrates that he no grasp on why the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 actually worked when other attempts at bureaucratic reform didn't.

Obama's essay was a little better, but it felt pretty light on substance. He spends a good deal of the essay invoking the leadership of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, but never really defines himself as a leader. The bulk of the essay consists of paeans to fashionable Democratic foreign policy causes with no clear sense of policy priority. The most developed portion of the essay was on nuclear nonproliferation, which shouldn't be surprising considering that Obama has been under Sen. Dick Lugar's tutelage in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the last three years:

As president, I will work with other nations to secure, destroy, and stop the spread of these weapons in order to dramatically reduce the nuclear dangers for our nation and the world. America must lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years -- the most effective way to prevent terrorists from acquiring a bomb.

This will require the active cooperation of Russia. Although we must not shy away from pushing for more democracy and accountability in Russia, we must work with the country in areas of common interest -- above all, in making sure that nuclear weapons and material are secure. We must also work with Russia to update and scale back our dangerously outdated Cold War nuclear postures and de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons. America must not rush to produce a new generation of nuclear warheads. And we should take advantage of recent technological advances to build bipartisan consensus behind ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. All of this can be done while maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent. These steps will ultimately strengthen, not weaken, our security.

As we lock down existing nuclear stockpiles, I will work to negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. We must also stop the spread of nuclear weapons technology and ensure that countries cannot build -- or come to the brink of building -- a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That is why my administration will immediately provide $50 million to jump-start the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency-controlled nuclear fuel bank and work to update the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We must also fully implement the law Senator Richard Lugar and I passed to help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.

Finally, we must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia. In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table. But our first measure must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy -- the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use.

As I read it, Obama is interested in the CTBT, the Fissban treaty, an international nuclear fuel bank, cooperative threat reduction. He also poop-poos the rush to field the RRW and says diplomacy would be the core of his nonproliferation policy to Iran and North Korea. Can't say I disagree when any of that.

China wants military power = Duh...

I'm growing so tired of boring pieces on China's military modernization. The latest example: American Enterprise Institute scholar Gary Schmitt's real snoozer in the op-ed section of today's Post:

Obviously, greater transparency by the Chinese would be helpful. But absent a significant shift toward political liberalization in China, there's no reason to expect that to happen. And anyway, after a decade and a half of military buildup, do we really need greater transparency to understand what China is up to?

The Chinese are a proud people and they want to be seen as a powerful, potentially dominant, state. And power, they understand, includes not only a strong economy but a powerful military. When the Chinese look at the world today, who gets in their way most of the time? It's certainly not the Europeans, who have economic strength but little hard power. It's the United States.

There is a tendency on the part of American Sinologists to think that China's "peaceful development" precludes it from craving what all rising powers before it have craved -- power and recognition. Yet the Chinese don't think the two are opposed at all. They view a growing economy as critical to solving their domestic problems, but they also know that it is critical to providing the resources for military modernization and expansion.

The lack of transparency is, if anything, a dodge we've used to avoid dealing with the real problem: China's ambitions to be as great a power as it can be. It's understandable, perhaps, that with all that is on America's plate at the moment, we're not inclined to add China. But that doesn't change the fact that Beijing believes the more military power it has, the more likely it is that those ambitions will be fulfilled.

I'll be the first person to agree with Mr. Schmitt's point here. China's military build up is almost entirely based its desire to amass national power. Since the end of the Cold War and its opening to investment from the West, threats against China have declined precipitously. There is an argument that modernization can sometimes reduce a military's long-term cost, but it would be hard to quantify this argument without reliable information on the PLA's current operating costs.

The problem is that Mr. Schmitt's argument does not answer two questions that are far more important:

Is this actually a threat?: The reason why American Sinologists pour over Chinese policy documents and lament about the PLA's lack of transparency is that foreign military power itself is not a threat. After the U.S., the next largest military spenders are the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan -- all of which are U.S. allies. One could easily argue that their $233 billion will be used against us any time soon. China is more of a black box. Do they plan on using their military to support the current U.S.-backed status quo or will they attempt to revise it? If they do intend to revise the status quo, how far are they willing to go to meet their objectives? These questions will lead to highly divergent requirements for the U.S. military that come with different future forces and price tags.

What can we do about it?: The U.S.'s military capabilities currently dwarf those of China and this is likely to continue for decades. Even China comes close to catching up, what can we do about it? U.S. military spending is pretty close to its budgetary limits and the Chinese have the sovereign right to build a military within the limits of international law. What does Mr. Schmitt propose we do if China's capabilities begin to rival our own? Raise taxes and increase defense spending? Launch a pre-emptive strike on China's materiel factories? Attempt to stifle Chinese economic growth?

China's interest in amassing military power tells me nothing. At the same time, "American preeminence" is an end state, not a strategy. Mr. Schmitt should come back when he has something interesting to say.

Note to the Army: About those dropships...

David Axe highlighted an interesting piece about efforts to refurbish the old S-64 Skycrane for modern use. Nestled down at the bottom of the article is a paragraph that caught my eye:

But there is a potential new role for which the Aircrane may be perfectly suited. The U.S. Pentagon is exploring a concept called Joint Heavy Lift, which calls for an aircraft capable of carrying 20 to 28 tons of combat systems to the battlefield. To that, Fraenkel was equally forthcoming. "We are at the beginning phase of making appropriate contacts within the military," he said. If the green light is given for re-start, Fraenkel said, "we would partner with M7 to produce center sections for us."

The Joint Heavy Lift has an interesting story behind it. The program was originally intended to provide a vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) heavy lift vehicle for the Marines and Army. It has been having trouble "getting off the ground" (pardon the pun) because the services want something vastly different. The Marines merely want a replacement for their CH-53 Super Stallions with something that can carry an external load of 14 tons over a 130 mile range.

The Army wants something far more ambitious. They want to produce a Heavy Lift VTOL system capable of hauling a 20 ton internal payload over a 1000 mile range. Just look at these wonderful computer-generated concept pictures available on Globalsecurity.org. It looks like a C-130 Hercules that has been mounted with a rotor blade that is the width of its wingspan.

At this point, you are probably asking yourself, "So What? This isn't the cockamamie proposed military platform out there." True, but the HLVTOL's unbelieveability is important because it is the unspoken Achilles' heel of Future Combat Systems.

The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command issued a pamphlet entitled "The Army in Joint Operations: The Army Future Force Capstone Concept" in April 2005. This document is intended to provide a conceptual framework for how the Army intends to fight behind the helm of FCS. Here is an excepted paragraph from section 5.3 entitled "Intratheater Operational Manuever:

The Future Force executes intratheater operational maneuver (see Figure 5-3) to extend the reach of the joint force thereby enabling the joint force commander to respond to opportunity or uncertainty, isolate portions of the battlefield, exploit success, and accomplish key campaign objectives. Operational movement of the force by ground, sea, or air can secure positions of advantage to destroy key capabilities and forces, extend tactical reach, achieve surprise, preemptively seize key terrain, overcome or avoid difficult terrain, accelerate the advance of the overall force, and block enemy forces. Such operational maneuver repositions forces in depth for immediate attack, substantively changing the geometry of the battlespace to U.S. advantage, and increasing complexity for the enemy. It also potentially exposes the entire enemy area of operations to direct attack, prevents resynchronization of enemy combat power, and denies reinforcement and sustainment. In all cases, forces must have the capability to reorient against follow-on objectives, with minimum delay. The process is repeated in rapid succession, and in concert with other ongoing operations, until enemy cohesion is destroyed beyond recovery.

So the future Army will be depend on a network of air assets that allow them around the 'hop' around enemy ground forces -- like an airborne blitzkrieg. It is certainly an interesting idea, but what will the Army do if those assets do not materialize in time? For that, you have to flip to the back of pamphlet to read section E-2 entitled "Alternate Futures." Specifically, a failure to "develop advanced lift capabilities to enable the use of unimproved air and sea entry points for force projection, operational maneuver, and sustainment" would:

Should these conditions continue into the future, the capstone concept this pamphlet describes will not be achievable. True joint interdependence would remain out of reach, with the current level of joint and multinational integration remaining in effect. Similarly, the capability to effectively combine new defeat mechanisms of dislocation and disintegration would be compromised. Land operations would almost certainly be constrained to traditional linear frameworks in major combat operations against effective adversaries. Significant improvement in the strategic responsiveness and operational agility of the Army would remain out of reach, particularly for the heavy force. The net effect would be one of stagnation and perpetuation of existing joint and Army doctrine into the foreseeable future, with only modest improvement in capability and operational utility.

So let me get this straight: The success of FCS, in all of its $200 billion, network-centric glory, is dependent on this thing getting off the ground? And the Army says that I am the one with the crazy ideas about the future force...

MRAP and EFPs

USAToday picks up on a key weakness of the military's new vehicular Ing'enue: The MRAP cannot stand up to explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs):

But the armor on those vehicles cannot stop the newest bomb to emerge, known as an explosively formed penetrator (EFP). The Pentagon plans to replace virtually all Humvees with MRAPs to provide better protection against roadside bombs, responsible for most casualties in Iraq.

The document, dated Jan. 13, is called an urgent universal need statement. The statements are written by field commanders in all services, who want commercially available solutions to battlefield problems.

Since MRAPs are so much safer against traditional roadside bombs, the document says, Iraqi insurgents' use of EFPs "can be expected to increase significantly."

As a result, the Marine commanders in Iraq who wrote the statement asked for more armor to be added to the new vehicles.

Armor performance information is pretty sensitive even when it is not classified, so I have waited until enough details surface in public before broaching the issue. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise consider that an EFP managed to penetrate the thick skin of a British Challenger 2 tank. If an EFP can go through a 60-ton tank encased in Chobham armor, what are the chances that the 15-ton MRAP's rolled steel would perform any better?

The MRAP's V-shaped hull design is really meant to deflect the energy of an explosion and not the EFP's focused blast. With enough armor, the hull curvature might deflect them in some situations, but the Marines shouldn't get their hopes up because EFPs have been known to resist even reactive armor.

I'm still not willing to dismiss the MRAP entirely because forcing the insurgents to use more EFPs could reduce causalities. Imagine that you are trying to pierce a 2-liter bottle of soda locked in a refrigerator and the only tools available were a ballista and a 18th Century cannon. The ballista's arrow would probably have enough force to go all the way through the fridge, but its damage would be highly localized. Heck, you might even miss the two-liter entirely.

Using the cannon is a different story. A cannonball might not pierce the fridge, but it would implode (or "spall") the fridge door, potentially destroying everything inside. Adding armor to the fridge would help you resist the cannonball's more distributed impact, but it would provide less protection against the ballista's bolt.

This may play out in Iraq in the same way. An EFP may injure one or even two passengers in an MRAP, but the rest of the crew would be relatively safe. Its not a perfect solution, but then again, are there any perfect solutions in war?

Is the U.S. becoming too risk averse?

UCSD professor and former Clinton administration official Richard Feinberg wrote an interesting op-ed piece in today's Post describing how U.S. embassies are turning into fortresses:

With threats to American power growing stronger and American prestige slipping around the world, our professional Foreign Service officers are more crucial than ever. Unfortunately, our approach to their security is making it almost impossible for many of them to do their jobs. Marooned in fortress-like embassies, cut off from the societies where they should be gathering intelligence and spreading American values, too many of them might as well be surveying the landscape from offices in Washington.

U.S. embassies are increasingly becoming like medieval fortresses -- remote, foreboding, impenetrable. Perched on suburban hilltops safely distant from more dangerous urban centers, they sit behind layers of high-security fences, reinforced concrete walls, thick glass windows and squads of armed guards.

[snip]

In violent cities, draconian security measures may be necessary. Diplomats in Baghdad inhabit the famous Green Zone, which generally shields them from car bombs and suicide bombers, even as U.S. intelligence has suffered from these separations. But this solution to extreme threats hardly seems warranted in most capitals. Yet in calm cities, from Singapore to Santiago, garrison embassy compounds are becoming the rule as strict security measures are standardized throughout the world.

Many security measures predated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and even the 1998 bombing of our embassies in East Africa. After the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, new embassies began to take on the fortress architecture, and tightened security was prioritized over diplomatic function. Certainly, when danger is demonstrable, smart security upgrades are warranted; security measures can partially be compensated for by attractive landscaping, and the loss of physical accessibility can be partially replaced by interactive Web sites. But in most places, the fortress embassies are overkill.

Yes, it's a dangerous world, but so is policing our own cities, and we do not suggest that police officers remain barricaded behind their precinct walls. Just the opposite: We now instruct law enforcement officers to walk the streets in their communities, believing that this is the best long-term approach to improving relations with citizens and, ultimately, reducing risk to the officers themselves.

Nor will it ever be possible to eliminate risk for overseas assignments, and attempts to do so become ever more expensive and self-defeating. The only foolproof way to eliminate risk to our diplomats is to bring them home. Better to restore a more considered balance between absolute security and diplomatic effectiveness -- and for the nation to recognize that diplomats, no less than soldiers, accept a degree of risk when they enlist.

I can commiserate with Mr. Feinberg's point. Two years after 9/11, I spent a summer working a U.S. consulate in Japan that was right on a major thoroughfare in the heart of a major Japanese city. The atmosphere of the facility was pretty open -- there were no concrete barriers on the sidewalk and the building's security detail was small cadre of polite Japanese security guards. The staff was so committed to this approach that they wouldn't even let a credible terrorist threat that copped up nearby hamper operations. In the end, their approach really paid dividends for the consulate in terms of public diplomacy and connecting to the local community.

Is this issue just part of a growing preference for risk averse foreign policies in the United States? One could easily see the parallels between the embassy issue and the public's obsession with "protecting our troops" by cocooning them in bulky body armor and increasingly heavy armored cars.

What about national security policy in general? Aren't programs like missile defense, prompt global strike, and the robust nuclear earth penetrator designed to substitute for policies that entail the risk of relying on the cooperation of foreigners -- such as cooperative security, international regimes and diplomacy?

FCS quote of the month

From Renae Merle's article in last Friday's Post (which I can't believe I missed):

In a statement released Wednesday, the White House said that it "strongly opposed" the cuts to FCS, asserting that it would "force the Army to retain its Cold War hardware (developed in the 1970s and fielded in the 1980s) well beyond 2040, preventing our soldiers from fielding the best available equipment in the future."

That's funny. If you read their latest Modernization Plan, the Army clearly feels its "Cold War hardware" is good enough for 30 of the Army's 45 active-duty Brigade Combat Teams to use through 2030. Its not even clear that the Army plans to eventually replace all of its BCTs with FCS after 2030.

I'm amazed to see the White House play the same procurement shell game that they shot down back in 2002 when the Army tried to save the XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer. This is all beside the fact that the Army is procuring hundreds of new tanks, trucks and aircraft to replace ones that were damaged, destroyed or worn down in Iraq -- to the tune of $17.1 billion in 2007 alone.