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Citizen-Soldiery Our Only Affordable Means of Defense

The Pentagon’s Fall Offensive has begun.

Code Letter: M.

Not Monica. Money. The Defense Department has embarked upon a sustained campaign to add a few more tens of billions to the $250 – $260 or so billion we already spend on that item yearly.

Generals and Admirals speak darkly and in unison of impending readiness free falls. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Jacques Gansler predicts a budgetary “death spiral” as modernization programs, one after another, get downsized or axed. Even Defense Secretary William Cohen seems vexed.

They’re telling the truth. The military has gone from robbing Petra to pay Pauline–sluicing money around the various accounts–to active self-cannibalization: sacrificing itself piecemeal in order to maintain an obsolete and ultimately insupportable Cold War structure.

We are headed toward defenselessness on $300 billion a year. And it will only get worse, unless and until this country returns to the military structure envisioned by the Founding Fathers: a small(ish) active establishment backed by a large citizen-soldiery.

Say what?

At first glance, the idea seems about as practical as reviving the horse cavalry. Its few current supporters include libertarians who favor minimal military forces and out-to-lunch leftists who extol the citizen-soldiery but really just want to trash the defense budget. Other proponents: former Democratic Senator and defense reformer Gary Hart, whose recent book, “The Minuteman,” touts reliance on the National Guard and service reserves as a way of reconnecting the American people to foreign affairs, and an assortment of mostly-gadfly analysts who dislike high-technology as a matter of religious faith.

But no one, so far, has made a compelling case that a citizen-based force would be both affordable (reserves cost far less than full-time forces) and militarily effective.

It is possible to suggest such a case. And it is vital that Americans who are serious about their country’s defense–and who have, for far too long, equated strength with spending and citizen participation with submission to the long-gone and good riddance federal draft–at least understand its logic. Two premises are key:

First, high-technology empowers the citizen-soldier.

And second, restructuring the military to meet 21st century challenges would yield an establishment far more amenable to citizen participation than the current edition.

(The active military, be it noted, is already irrevocably dependent upon the citizen-soldiery. Under the Total Force Policy, Guard members and reservists suffuse the active establishment, at every level from boots-in-Bosnia to the Pentagon’s E-ring. Congress is considering adding the head of the National Guard Bureau to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine Corps and the Air Force have demonstrated, for decades and in the Gulf War, how effective “weekend warriors” can be, given proper resources and training . . . and an active-duty leadership that wants them to succeed.)

Now let’s talk empowerment via high-technology. This comes in two varieties: training and strategy.

First, the “Revolution in Training”–all those virtual reality and computerized games and gizmos – now make it possible to maintain complex skills at both the individual and unit levels. Weapons adapters, tank and aircraft simulators, real-time command post exercises, and an array of other devices offer unprecedented opportunities to keep the citizen-soldiery more good-to-go than ever before.

True, simulation can never totally replace field training, or provide that interesting mix of sensations associated with live incoming. But 21st century training techniques, properly utilized, can drastically cut the time required for post-mobilization train-up.

“Halt” also empowers.

This single word, aka the “Halt Phase Strategy,” encapsulates the liveliest, not to say nastiest, doctrinal debate to rile the military since Desert Storm.

In essence, this Air Force concept holds that, if American strategy for major war in Korea and the Persian Gulf is to wait for the bad guys to hit first, then stop ’em fast, the best and perhaps only way to stop–or halt–’em is by the massive use of joint airpower and gee-whiz precision weaponry in the initial hours and days.

Once stopped, the enemy can no longer achieve his objectives. As air attack continues, the bad guys must either leave or die. Stalemate buys time to bring in ground forces and pursue diplomatic and other options prior to launching the counter-offensive.

Not surprisingly, the Army and, to some extent, the Marines, dismiss “Halt” as a thinly veiled Air Force money-grab. And they ask, “What happens if it doesn’t work?”

Valid points, both. But “Halt” has a corollary that the Army finds as odious as proponents of the citizen-soldiery deem delightful.

If “Halt” provides “the gift of time,” if getting ground forces to some stalemated war can be done in months and not weeks (which is the case anyway, given air and sealift limitations), Guard and reserve forces acquire a new utility. Why keep ten expensive active Army divisions around when only a few might be necessary for rapid response?

Whether “Halt” ever becomes a Pentagon strategy, i.e., budgeting priority, remains to be seen. But it is clear that there now exists at least the possibility of a remarkable synergy between the militia of the Founders’ intent and America’s 21st century aerospace power.

If high-technology empowers the citizen-soldiery, restructuring the military might also open up an array of possibilities for increased participation. One set of options, called here “Space Force, Peace Force, Warriors, Guard,” seems radical. In fact, it merely makes explicit a number of evolutions already in progress, and realigns force structure to take advantage of those changes.

To explain:

Not so long ago, preparing for war was simple. You got yourself an army for land and a navy for water. Neither could do, or take, the other’s job. You looked at the worst possible scenario, usually some nasty country or alliance, and organized for that. With some exceptions, lesser contingencies could be handled by “worst-case” forces conveniently dubbed, “general purpose.”

Then the airplane began to blur the tidy distinction between land and sea combat. Then came the proliferation of new technologies and hundreds of “mix-and-match” systems: putting airplanes on ships, missiles on submarines, etc. The “Precision-Guidance Revolution” not only made weapons more accurate, but increased the number and flexibility of delivery systems.

For example, once, the best weapon against a tank was another tank. Today, there are at least a dozen armor-plinking techniques, with more on the way, including submarines firing cruise missiles that dispense sensor-fuzed or satellite-guided precision submunitions over distant battlefields.

When you can fight tanks with submarines, you’re in a new world: one in which technology drives the services to ever greater interdependence.

And, of course, we’re in a new world in another sense. We’ve lost our Soviet “peer competitor,” the force against which we planned and structured for five decades. The conceit of “general purpose” forces remains, but there is a clear and deadly difference between taking on mere regional powers in conventional combat and – two new tasks – fighting urban guerrillas in Third world megasprawls or defending America against weapons of mass destruction.

So, if the services are now thoroughly interdependent, and the threats are many and diffuse, perhaps the old “land/sea/air” division of labor avails less than tailoring forces by task.

Hence, at least as a concept, “Space Force, Peace Force, Warriors, Guard.”

Space Force

The United States grows ever more dependent, militarily and economically, on space-based systems. Military and civilian assets must be exploited and protected. The Air Force has committed to evolve into a “space and air force.” It also has to work out a new and far more intimate relationship with a burgeoning civilian space industry whose technologies often eclipse those of the military. Finally, it will have to manage large portions of the space-based missile and air defense systems that must ultimately be built.

Reservists and Air Guardsmen, many with civilian careers in the space sector or other relevant industries, already participate deeply in military space activities. This trend should be encouraged. A few years from now, the Pentagon may wish to consider “spinning off” a separate Space Service as a co-equal branch within the Department of the Air Force. In any case, there is no reason why much of the ground-based work of a Space Service cannot be done by citizen-soldiers.

Peace Force

MOOTW–Military Operations Other Than War–are expensive and exhausting. The Pentagon readily concedes that they could not be done today without thousands of Guard members and reservists handling part of the load. Still, U.S. combat units should not be used – and used up – in these activities, save in extremis and for short duration. The Army might consider establishing a separate MOOTW division, composed of active and reserve units. The National Guard, only a portion of whose forces are necessary for conventional war, could and should structure new units to take up this mission.

Warriors

It is fashionable to argue that, given the range and lethality of modern weapons, everybody in uniform is now a combatant. This is nonsense. All are expected to go in harm’s way when necessary, but only a small percentage have to fight. Combatant forces, whether preparing for conventional war or “asymmetrical threats,” should be left alone. When they’re not preparing to fight, they should be fighting.

Probably about half of our citizen-soldiery might fall into this category, thoroughly integrated with regular forces, whether as individual fillers or unit “roundout.”

Guard

This refers to forces missioned and trained for homeland defense and “consequence management” of terrorist and other strikes. As a general rule, whatever can be done by Guard and reserve units, with their local expertise, relationships, and loyalties, should be done by the Guard and reserves.

Further, there is no inherent reason why every Guard or reserve unit must be organized, equipped, and trained for foreign deployment. It may be far preferable to prepare special units for domestic missions only, and, in the case of the Army Guard, to spread “mini-units” around the nation, perhaps co-locating them with local fire or police stations.

In the 21st century, a few good Guard members in every town may prove more valuable than larger units sitting in consolidated armories, going nowhere.

But will any of this come to pass? The short answer is: It, or something like it, must. For, whatever the short-term success of the Fall Offensive, the money ain’t there. No conceivable peacetime budget can maintain, let alone modernize the present defense establishment.

The Fall Offensive may buy time. But that’s all.

Philip Gold, a former Marine, is president of Aretéa, a Seattle public policy and cultural affairs research center and director of defense and aerospace studies at Discovery Institute.

Philip Gold

Dr. Philip Gold is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, and director of the Institute's Aerospace 2010 Project. A former Marine, he is the author of Evasion,: The American Way of Military Service and over 100 articles on defense matters. He teaches at Georgetown University and is a frequent op-ed contributor to several newspapers. Dr. Gold divides his time between Seattle and Washington, D.C.